Particle–hole symmetry protects spin-valley blockade in graphene quantum dots

Particle–hole symmetry plays an important role in the characterization of topological phases in solid-state systems1. It is found, for example, in free-fermion systems at half filling and it is closely related to the notion of antiparticles in relativistic field theories2. In the low-energy limit, graphene is a prime example of a gapless particle–hole symmetric system described by an effective Dirac equation3,4 in which topological phases can be understood by studying ways to open a gap by preserving (or breaking) symmetries5,6. An important example is the intrinsic Kane–Mele spin-orbit gap of graphene, which leads to a lifting of the spin-valley degeneracy and renders graphene a topological insulator in a quantum spin Hall phase7 while preserving particle–hole symmetry. Here we show that bilayer graphene allows the realization of electron–hole double quantum dots that exhibit near-perfect particle–hole symmetry, in which transport occurs via the creation and annihilation of single electron–hole pairs with opposite quantum numbers. Moreover, we show that particle–hole symmetric spin and valley textures lead to a protected single-particle spin-valley blockade. The latter will allow robust spin-to-charge and valley-to-charge conversion, which are essential for the operation of spin and valley qubits.