Strontium titanate is a low-temperature, non-Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer superconductor that superconducts to carrier concentrations lower than in any other system and exhibits avoided ferroelectricity at low temperatures. Neither the mechanism of superconductivity in strontium titanate nor the importance of the structure and dielectric properties for the superconductivity are well understood. We studied the effects of twin structure on superconductivity in a 5.5-nm-thick layer of niobium-doped SrTiO3 embedded in undoped SrTiO3.

Quantum spin Hall devices with edges much longer than several microns do not display ballistic transport; that is, their measured conductances are much less than e2/h per edge. We imaged edge currents in InAs/GaSb quantum wells with long edges and determined an effective edge resistance. Surprisingly, although the effective edge resistance is much greater than h/e2, it is independent of temperature up to 30 K within experimental resolution. Known candidate scattering mechanisms do not explain our observation of an effective edge resistance that is large yet temperature independent.

The ability to control materials properties through interface engineering is demonstrated by the appearance of conductivity at the interface of certain insulators, most famously the 001 interface of the band insulators LaAlO 3 and TiO 2 -terminated SrTiO 3 (STO; refs,). Transport and other measurements in this system show a plethora of diverse physical phenomena. To better understand the interface conductivity, we used scanning superconducting quantum interference device microscopy to image the magnetic field locally generated by current in an interface.

The quantum spin Hall (QSH) state is a state of matter characterized by a non-trivial topology of its band structure, and associated conducting edge channels. The QSH state was predicted and experimentally demonstrated to be realized in HgTe quantum wells. The existence of the edge channels has been inferred from local and non-local transport measurements in sufficiently small devices. Here we directly confirm the existence of the edge channels by imaging the magnetic fields produced by current flowing in large Hall bars made from HgTe quantum wells.

As part of a joint Stanford/IBM effort to build a scanning SQUID microscopy user facility at Stanford, we have designed and fabricated three types of scanning SQUID microscope sensors. The first is a SQUID susceptometer, with a symmetric, gradiometric design, pickup loops with 0.1 micrometer minimum feature size integrated into the SQUID body through coaxially shielded leads, integrated flux modulation coils, and counterwound one-turn field coils.

The interaction of an electronic spin with its nuclear environment, an issue known as the central spin problem, has been the subject of considerable attention due to its relevance for spin-based quantum computation using semiconductor quantum dots. Independent control of the nuclear spin bath using nuclear magnetic resonance techniques and dynamic nuclear polarization using the central spin itself offer unique possibilities for manipulating the nuclear bath with significant consequences for the coherence and controlled manipulation of the central spin.

We investigate phonon-induced spin and charge relaxation mediated by spin-orbit and hyperfine interactions for a single electron confined within a double quantum dot. A simple toy model incorporating both direct decay to the ground state of the double dot and indirect decay via an intermediate excited state yields an electron spin relaxation rate that varies nonmonotonically with the detuning between the dots.

We investigate the electric manipulation of a single-electron spin in a single gate-defined quantum dot. We observe that so-far neglected differences between the hyperfine- and spin-orbit-mediated electric dipole spin resonance conditions have important consequences at high magnetic fields. In experiments using adiabatic rapid passage to invert the electron spin, we observe an unusually wide and asymmetric response as a function of the magnetic field. Simulations support the interpretation of the line shape in terms of four different resonance conditions.

The interface between the insulating oxides LaAlO 3 and SrTiO 3 exhibits a superconducting two-dimensional electron system that can be modulated by a gate voltage. While the conductivity has been probed extensively and gating of the superconducting critical temperature has been demonstrated, the question as to whether, and if so how, the gate tunes the superfluid density and superconducting order parameter needs to be answered. We present local magnetic susceptibility, related to the superfluid density, as a function of temperature, gate voltage, and location.

Measurement of coupled quantum systems plays a central role in quantum information processing. We have realized independent single-shot read-out of two electron spins in a double quantum dot. The read-out method is all-electrical, cross-talk between the two measurements is negligible, and read-out fidelities are ∼86% on average. This allows us to directly probe the anticorrelations between two spins prepared in a singlet state and to demonstrate the operation of the two-qubit exchange gate on a complete set of basis states.