Tunable phonon induced steady state coherence in a double quantum dot

Abstract: Charge qubits can be created and manipulated in solid-state double-quantum-dot (DQD) platforms. Typically, these systems are strongly affected by quantum noise stemming from coupling to substrate phonons. This is usually assumed to lead to decoherence towards steady states that are diagonal in the energy eigenbasis. In this article we show, to the contrary, that due to the presence of phonons the equilibrium steady state of the DQD charge qubit spontaneously exhibits coherence in the energy eigenbasis with high purity. The magnitude and phase of the coherence can be controlled by tuning the Hamiltonian parameters of the qubit. The coherence is also robust to presence of fermionic leads. In addition, we show that this steady-state coherence can be used to drive an auxiliary cavity mode coupled to the DQD.