Continuous measurement of a microwave-driven solid state qubit

Abstract

We analyze the dynamics of a continuously observed, damped, microwave driven solid state charge qubit. The qubit consists of a single electron in a double well potential, coupled to an oscillating electric field, and which is continuously observed by a nearby point contact electrometer. The microwave field induces transitions between the qubit eigenstates, which have a profound effect on the detector output current. We show that useful information about the qubit dynamics, such as dephasing and relaxation rates, and the Rabi frequency, can be extracted from the DC detector conductance and the detector output noise power spectrum. We also demonstrate that these phenomena can be used for single shot electron \emph{spin} readout, for spin based quantum information processing.