Smooth velocity shuttling for suppressing valley excitations in disordered Si/SiGe quantum dots

Abstract

Coherent electron shuttling is a key requirement for realizing scalable silicon quantum computing architectures. However, in silicon qubits, the existence of nearly degenerate conduction-band valleys poses a significant challenge because non-adiabatic transitions to excited valley states cause spin dephasing via spin-valley mixing. In this paper, we propose a smooth velocity shuttling protocol to suppress these valley excitations. By mapping the time-domain design of the shuttling velocity profile onto the design problem of window functions in signal processing, we establish an analytical and intuitive design guideline that does not require computationally expensive numerical optimization. We demonstrate that the high-frequency sidelobes of the shuttling velocity spectrum can be effectively suppressed by applying a frequency-modulated gate voltage based on the Tukey window. Through statistical numerical simulations incorporating realistic spatial randomness of the valley landscape, we show that the proposed smooth velocity control significantly reduces the average spin infidelity in the moderate-to-low disorder regime ($|Δ_0|/σ_Δ\simeq \mathcal{O}(1)$). Our results underscore that this simple, control-level velocity shaping provides a robust pathway toward high-fidelity spin transport in large-scale silicon quantum processors.