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 nitrogen-vacancy 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 ions in a yttrium orthosilicate host, featuring a coherence time of . This coherent interaction time is sufficiently long to isolate proximal nuclear spins from the nuclear spin bath of . Furthermore, it allows for the detection of a single nearby nuclear spin, native to the host material with 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.
- Received 15 November 2019
- Accepted 26 March 2020
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.170402
© 2020 American Physical Society
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
synopsis
Sensing Single Spins in Dense Spin Baths
Published 29 April 2020
The measurement of a single nuclear spin in a noisy spin environment opens up new possibilities for quantum technologies.
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