Field-controlled suppression of phonon-induced transitions in coupled quantum dots

We suggest that order-of-magnitude reduction of the longitudinal-acoustic phonon scattering rate, the dominant decoherence mechanism in quantum dots, can be achieved in coupled structures by the application of an external electric or magnetic field. Modulation of the scattering rate is traced to the relation between the wavelength of the emitted phonon and the length scale of delocalized electron wave functions. Explicit calculations for realistic devices, performed with a Fermi golden rule approach and a fully three-dimensional description of the electronic quantum states, show that the lifetime of specific states can achieve tens of microseconds. Our findings extend the feasibility basis of many proposals for quantum gates based on coupled quantum dots. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.