  Telegraph noise, which originates from the switching of charge between
meta-stable trapping sites, becomes increasingly important as device sizes
approach the nano-scale. For charge-based quantum computing, this noise may
lead to decoherence and loss of read out fidelity. Here we use a radio
frequency single electron transistor (rf-SET) to probe the telegraph noise
present in a typical semiconductor-based quantum computer architecture. We
frequently observe micro-second telegraph noise, which is a strong function of
the local electrostatic potential defined by surface gate biases. We present a
method for studying telegraph noise using the rf-SET and show results for a
charge trap in which the capture and emission of a single electron is
controlled by the bias applied to a surface gate.
