Sensing Individual Nuclear Spins with a Single Rare-Earth Electron Spin

Abstract

Rare-earth related electron spins in crystalline hosts are unique material systems, as they can potentially provide a direct interface between telecom band photons and long-lived spin quantum bits. Specifically, their optically accessible electron spins in solids interacting with nuclear spins in their environment are valuable quantum memory resources. Detection of nearby individual nuclear spins, so far exclusively shown for few dilute nuclear spin bath host systems such as the NV center in diamond or the silicon vacancy in silicon carbide, remained an open challenge for rare-earths in their host materials, which typically exhibit dense nuclear spin baths. Here, we present the electron spin spectroscopy of single Ce 3+ ions in a yttrium orthosilicate host, featuring a coherence time of T2 = 124 µs. This coherent interaction time is sufficiently long to isolate proximal 89 Y nuclear spins from the nuclear spin bath of 89 Y. Furthermore, it allows for the detection of a single nearby 29 Si nuclear spin, native to the host material with˜5 % abundance. This study opens the door to quantum memory applications in rare-earth ion related systems based on coupled environmental nuclear spins, potentially useful for quantum error correction schemes.

Optical spin-state polarization in a binuclear europium complex towards molecule-based coherent light-spin interfaces

“…The nuclear spin (I) containing REI-isotopes enable the creation of nuclear spin superposition states with long spin coherence lifetimes (T 2spin ), useful for storing quantum states 11,18,19 . Importantly, the exceptionally good optical coherence lifetimes associated with the 4f-4f transitions allow for coherent optical addressing and manipulation of nuclear spin states [20][21][22] .…”

Molecule-based coherent light-spin interfaces for quantum information processing – optical spin state polarization in a binuclear Europium complex

“…The nuclear spin (I) containing REI-isotopes enable the creation of nuclear spin superposition states with long spin coherence lifetimes (T2spin), useful for storing quantum states 11,18,19 . Importantly, the exceptionally good optical coherence lifetimes associated with the 4f-4f transitions allow for coherent optical addressing and manipulation of nuclear spin states [20][21][22] .…”

Optical and Zeeman spectroscopy of individual Er ion pairs in silicon

“…For computing in particular, the possibility of creating arrays of closely spaced, optically coupled spins is attractive as these arrays can provide a multi-qubit system where the short-range interactions between different qubits enable fast multi-qubit gates. For instance, by using a set of 13 C nuclear spins coupled to an optically active diamond nitrogen vacancy center, entangling gate operations have been achieved in a ten-qubit array [2].…”