A high-sensitivity gate-based charge sensor in silicon

The implementation of a quantum computer requires a qubit-specific measurement capability to read-out the final state of a quantum system. The model of spin dependent tunneling followed by charge readout has been highly successful in enabling spin qubit experiments in all-electrical, semiconductor based quantum computing. As experiments grow more sophisticated, and head towards multiple qubit architectures that enable small scale computation, it becomes important to consider the charge read-out overhead. With this in mind, Reilly et al. demonstrated a gate readout scheme in a GaAs double quantum dot that removed the need for an external charge sensor. This readout, which achieved sensitivities of order me/√(()Hz), was enabled by using a resonant circuit to probe the complex radio-frequency polarisability of the double quantum dot. However, the ultimate performance of this technology and the noise sources that limit it remain to be determined. Here, we investigate a gate-based readout scheme using a radio-frequency resonant circuit strongly coupled to a double quantum at the corner states of a silicon nanowire transistor. We find a significantly improved charge sensitivity of 37 μe/√(()Hz). By solving the dynamical master equation of the fast-driven electronic transitions we quantify the noise spectral density and determine the ultimate charge and phase sensitivity of gate-based read-out. We find comparable performance to conventional charge sensors and fundamental limits of order ne/√(()Hz) and μrad/√(()Hz), with the gate-based sensor improving on standard detection for certain device parameters. Our results show that, especially in state-of-the-art silicon qubit architectures, charge detection by probing the complex polarisability has advantages in terms of reducing the readout overhead but also in terms of the absolute charge sensitivity.