True decoherence-free-subspace derived from a semiconductor double quantum dot Heisenberg spin-trimer

Abstract Spins in solid systems can inherently serve as qubits for quantum simulation or quantum information processing. Spin qubits are usually prone to environmental magnetic field fluctuations; however, a spin qubit encoded in a decoherence-free-subspace (DFS) can be protected from certain degrees of environmental noise depending on the specific structure of the DFS. Here, we derive the “true” DFS from an antiferromagnetic Heisenberg spin-1/2 trimer, which protects the qubit states against both short- and long-wavelength magnetic field fluctuations. We define the spin trimer with three electrons confined in a gate-defined GaAs double quantum dot (DQD) where we exploit Wigner-molecularization in one of the quantum dots. We first utilize the trimer for dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP), which generates a sizable magnetic field difference, ΔB z, within the DQD. We show that large ΔB z significantly alters the eigenspectrum of the trimer and results in the “true” DFS in the DQD. Real-time Bayesian estimation of the DFS energy gap explicitly demonstrates protection of the DFS against short-wavelength magnetic field fluctuations in addition to long-wavelength ones. Our findings pave the way toward compact DFS structures for exchange-coupled quantum dot spin chains, the internal structure of which can be coherently controlled completely decoupled from environmental magnetic fields.