Coupling artificial molecular spin states by photon-assisted tunnelling

Artificial molecules containing just one or two electrons provide a powerful platform for studies of orbital and spin quantum dynamics in nanoscale devices. A well-known example of these dynamics is tunnelling of electrons between two coupled quantum dots triggered by microwave irradiation. So far, these tunnelling processes have been treated as electric-dipole-allowed spin-conserving events. Here we report that microwaves can also excite tunnelling transitions between states with different spin. We show that the dominant mechanism responsible for violation of spin conservation is the spin–orbit interaction. These transitions make it possible to perform detailed microwave spectroscopy of the molecular spin states of an artificial hydrogen molecule and open up the possibility of realizing full quantum control of a two-spin system through microwave excitation. Tunnelling transitions triggered by microwave irradiation between coupled quantum dots have generally been assumed to be spin-conserving. This study shows that this condition is violated in the presence of spin–orbit coupling, thus opening new possibilities for manipulating a two–spin qubit system by microwave irradiation.