  Self-assembled semiconductor quantum dots show remarkable optical and spin
coherence properties, which have lead to a concerted research effort examining
their potential as a quantum bit for quantum information science1-6. Here, we
present an alternative application for such devices, exploiting recent
achievements of charge occupation control and the spectral tunability of the
optical emission of quantum dots by electric fields7 to demonstrate
high-sensitivity electric field measurement. In contrast to existing
nanometer-scale electric field sensors, such as single electron transistors8-11
and mechanical resonators12,13, our approach relies on homodyning light
resonantly Rayleigh scattered from a quantum dot transition with the excitation
laser and phase sensitive lock-in detection. This offers both static and
transient field detection ability with high bandwidth operation and near unity
quantum efficiency. Our theoretical estimation of the static field sensitivity
for typical parameters, 0.5 V/m/ \surd Hz, compares favorably to the
theoretical limit for single electron transistor-based electrometers. The
sensitivity level of 5 V/m/ \surd Hz we report in this work, which corresponds
to 6.4 * 10-6 e/ \surd Hz at a distance of 12 nm, is worse than this
theoretical estimate, yet higher than any other result attained at 4.2 K or
higher operation temperature.
