On-Demand Single-Electron Source via Single-Cycle Acoustic Pulses

Abstract: Surface acoustic waves (SAWs) are a reliable solution to transport single electrons with precision in piezoelectric semiconductor devices. Recently, highly efficient single-electron transport with a strongly compressed single-cycle acoustic pulse has been demonstrated. This approach, however, requires surface gates constituting the quantum dots, their wiring, and multiple gate movements to load and unload the electrons, which is very time-consuming. Here, on the contrary, we employ such a single-cycle acoustic pulse in a much simpler way - without any quantum dot at the entrance or exit of a transport channel - to perform single-electron transport between distant electron reservoirs. We observe the transport of a solitary electron in a single-cycle acoustic pulse via the appearance of the quantized acousto-electric current. The simplicity of our approach allows for on-demand electron emission with arbitrary delays on a ns time scale. We anticipate that enhanced synthesis of the SAWs will facilitate electron-quantum-optics experiments with multiple electron flying qubits.