Quantum computing with single electron bubbles in helium

Abstract

An electron inside liquid helium forms a bubble of 17 Åin radius. In an external magnetic field, the two-level system of a spin 1/2 electron is ideal for the implementation of a qubit for quantum computing. The electron spin is well isolated from other thermal reservoirs so that the qubit should have very long coherence time. By confining a chain of single electron bubbles in a linear RF quadrupole trap, a multi-bit quantum register can be implemented. All spins in the register can be initialized to the ground state either by establishing thermal equilibrium at a temperature around 0.1 K and at a magnetic field of 1 T or by sorting the bubbles to be loaded into the trap with magnetic separation. Schemes are designed to address individual spins and to do two-qubit CNOT operations between the neighboring spins. The final readout can be carried out through a measurement similar to the Stern-Gerlach experiment.