Engineering Spin‐Orbit Interactions in Silicon Qubits at the Atomic‐Scale

Spin‐orbit interactions arise whenever the bulk inversion symmetry and/or structural inversion symmetry of a crystal is broken providing a bridge between a qubit's spin and orbital degree of freedom. While strong interactions can facilitate fast qubit operations by all‐electrical control, they also provide a mechanism to couple charge noise thereby limiting qubit lifetimes. Previously believed to be negligible in bulk silicon, recent silicon nano‐electronic devices have shown larger than bulk spin‐orbit coupling strengths from Dresselhaus and Rashba couplings. Here, it is shown that with precision placement of phosphorus atoms in silicon along the [110] direction (without inversion symmetry) or [111] direction (with inversion symmetry), a wide range of Dresselhaus and Rashba coupling strength can be achieved from zero to 1113 × 10 −13 eV‐cm. It is shown that with precision placement of phosphorus atoms, the local symmetry ( C 2 v , D 2 d , and D 3 d ) can be changed to engineer spin‐orbit interactions. Since spin‐orbit interactions affect both qubit operation and lifetimes, understanding their impact is essential for quantum processor design.