Cryogenic amplifier for fast real-time detection of single-electron tunneling

The authors employ a cryogenic high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) amplifier to increase the bandwidth of a charge detection setup with a quantum point contact (QPC) charge sensor. The HEMT is operating at 1K and the circuit has a bandwidth of 1MHz. The noise contribution of the HEMT at high frequencies is only a few times higher than that of the QPC shot noise. The authors use this setup to monitor single-electron tunneling to and from an adjacent quantum dot. The authors measure fluctuations in the dot occupation as short as 400ns, 20 times faster than in previous work.