Raman phonon emission in a driven double quantum dot

The compound semiconductor gallium–arsenide (GaAs) provides an ultra-clean platform for storing and manipulating quantum information, encoded in the charge or spin states of electrons confined in nanostructures. The absence of inversion symmetry in the zinc-blende crystal structure of GaAs however, results in a strong piezoelectric interaction between lattice acoustic phonons and qubit states with an electric dipole, a potential source of decoherence during charge-sensitive operations. Here we report phonon generation in a GaAs double quantum dot, configured as a single- or two-electron charge qubit, and driven by the application of microwaves via surface gates. In a process that is a microwave analogue of the Raman effect, phonon emission produces population inversion of the two-level system and leads to rapid decoherence of the qubit when the microwave energy exceeds the level splitting. Comparing data with a theoretical model suggests that phonon emission is a sensitive function of the device geometry.