Fabrication and Characterization of Dopant-based 2D Lattices for Analog Quantum Simulation of an Extended Fermi Hubbard Model

The Hubbard model is one of the primary models for understanding the essential many-body physics in condensed matter systems such as Mott insulators and cuprate high-Tc superconductors. Recent advances in atomically precise fabrication in silicon using scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) have made possible atom-by-atom fabrication of single and few-dopant quantum dots and atomic-scale control of tunneling in dopant-based devices, enabling the engineering of dopant-based artificial lattices with atomic-scale precision. In this talk, we present our recent experimental implementation of STM-fabricated 3x3 arrays of few-dopant quantum dots as a tunable 2D artificial lattice. We discuss tuning of the array parameters, such as the electron ensemble, hopping and long-range interactions, and thermal activations within the arrays, and probing different many-body properties within the array using low-temperature transport. The results demonstrate the viability of simulating extended Fermi-Hubbard Hamiltonians using dopant-based 2D artificial lattices having finite disorder.