Professor Kazuhiko Hirakawa, Professor Yasuhiko Arakawa, and Project Associate Professor Jinkwan Kwoen and their colleage have successfully generated a hybrid quantum coupled state with both optical and electronic properties through strong coupling between an optical resonator, called a split-ring resonator, fabricated on a semiconductor substrate with a resonance frequency in the terahertz band, and a few electron trapped in a semiconductor quantum dot. The research group had already succeeded in detecting a hybrid quantum state of strong coupling electrons and terahertz electromagnetic waves in a nanostructure, which they call a quantum point contact by a two-dimensional electron gas formed in a semiconductor heterostructure, as an electrical signal. And now they have succeeded in electrically detecting a strong coupling between a few electrons in a quantum dot, which is superior in quantum control, and terahertz waves. This enables quantum information possessed by electrons to be transported to distant locations via terahertz electromagnetic waves, and is expected to be applied to large-scale solid-state quantum computers, such as the transmission of quantum information between semiconductor qubits on an integrated circuit substrate. The resulting paper was published in the February 9 ONLINE edition of Physical Review Letters.
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