High-fidelity single-spin shuttling in silicon

The computational power and fault-tolerance of future large-scale quantum processors derive in large part from the connectivity between the qubits. One approach to increase connectivity is to engineer qubit-qubit interactions at a distance. Alternatively, the connectivity can be increased by physically displacing the qubits. This has been explored in trapped-ion experiments and using neutral atoms trapped with optical tweezers. For semiconductor spin qubits, several studies have investigated spin coherent shuttling of individual electrons, but high-fidelity transport over extended distances remains to be demonstrated. Here we report shuttling of an electron inside an isotopically purified Si/SiGe heterostructure using electric gate potentials. First, we form static quantum dots, and study how spin coherence decays as we repeatedly move a single electron between up to five dots. Next, we create a traveling wave potential to transport an electron in a moving quantum dot. This second method shows substantially better spin coherence than the first. It allows us to displace an electron over an effective distance of 10 μm in under 200 ns with an average fidelity of 99.5%. These results will guide future efforts to realize large-scale semiconductor quantum processors, making use of electron shuttling both within and between qubit arrays.