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Predicted Ultrafast Single Qubit Operations in Semiconductor Quantum Dots

Several recently proposed implementations of scalable quantum computation rely on the ability to manipulate the spin polarization of individual electrons in semiconductors. The most rapid single-spin-manipulation technique to date relies on the generation of an effective magnetic field via a spin-sensitive optical Stark effect. This approach has been used to split spin states in colloidal CdSe quantum dots and to manipulate ensembles of spins in ZnMnSe quantum wells with femtosecond optical pulses. Here we report that the process will produce a coherent rotation of spin in quantum dots containing a single electron. The calculated magnitude of the effective magnetic field depends on the dot bandgap and the strain. We predict that in InAs/InP dots, for reasonable experimental parameters, the magnitude of the rotation is sufficient and the intrinsic error is low enough for them to serve as elements of a quantum dot based quantum computer.