Dispersive readout of valley splittings in cavity-coupled silicon quantum dots

Abstract: The bandstructure of bulk silicon has a six-fold valley degeneracy. Strain in the Si/SiGe quantum well system partially lifts the valley degeneracy, but the materials factors that set the splitting of the two lowest lying valleys are still under intense investigation. We propose a method for accurately determining the valley splitting in Si/SiGe double quantum dots embedded into a superconducting microwave resonator. We show that low lying valley states in the double quantum dot energy level spectrum lead to readily observable features in the cavity transmission. These features generate a "fingerprint" of the microscopic energy level structure of a semiconductor double quantum dot, providing useful information on valley splittings and intervalley coupling rates.