Enhanced intrinsic spin-orbit driving of a Loss-DiVincenzo qubit near the spin-valley hotspot in Si/SiGe

Abstract: In most Si/SiGe-based spin qubit implementations, high-fidelity single-qubit gates are achieved using micromagnets, which enable the use of electric spin dipole resonance via synthetic spin-orbit coupling (s-SOC). In contrast, intrinsic spin-orbit coupling (i-SOC) in silicon is generally considered to be weak. However, in Si/SiGe heterostructures, theory predicts a substantial enhancement when the Zeeman splitting approaches the valley splitting if symmetry is reduced by an imperfect interface. Here, we demonstrate a Si/SiGe Loss-DiVincenzo qubit driven by i-SOC close to this so-called spin-valley hotspot. In particular, we characterize the Rabi frequency as a function of the energy detuning from the hotspot by sweeping both the magnetic field and quantum dot position. We observe the predicted enhancement of the Rabi frequency near the hotspot, but also find an asymmetry that deviates from existing theoretical models as well as distortions of the Chevron patterns near the hotspot. While we achieve an average single-qubit Clifford fidelity of 98.6 %, the strong variability of the valley splitting may impede the use of i-SOC-based control as a scalable operational strategy; understanding its effect is nevertheless important for reproducible high-fidelity control. Our results provide an empirical basis for refining current theoretical models of spin-valley physics in Si/SiGe heterostructures.