No Arabic abstract
Optically-detected paramagnetic centers in wide-bandgap semiconductors are emerging as a promising platform for nanoscale metrology at room temperature. Of particular interest are applications where the center is used as a probe to interrogate other spins that cannot be observed directly. Using the nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond as a model system, we propose a new strategy to determining the spatial coordinates of weakly coupled nuclear spins. The central idea is to label the target nucleus with a spin polarization that depends on its spatial location, which is subsequently revealed by making this polarization flow back to the NV for readout. Using extensive analytical and numerical modeling, we show that the technique can attain high spatial resolution depending on the NV lifetime and target spin location. No external magnetic field gradient is required, which circumvents complications resulting from changes in the direction of the applied magnetic field, and considerably simplifies the required instrumentation. Extensions of the present technique may be adapted to pinpoint the locations of other paramagnetic centers in the NV vicinity or to yield information on dynamical processes in molecules on the diamond surface.
We experimentally isolate, characterize and coherently control up to six individual nuclear spins that are weakly coupled to an electron spin in diamond. Our method employs multi-pulse sequences on the electron spin that resonantly amplify the interaction with a selected nuclear spin and at the same time dynamically suppress decoherence caused by the rest of the spin bath. We are able to address nuclear spins with interaction strengths that are an order of magnitude smaller than the electron spin dephasing rate. Our results provide a route towards tomography with single-nuclear-spin sensitivity and greatly extend the number of available quantum bits for quantum information processing in diamond.
Single-shot readout of qubits is required for scalable quantum computing. Nuclear spins are superb quantum memories due to their long coherence times but are difficult to be read out in single shot due to their weak interaction with probes. Here we demonstrate single-shot readout of a weakly coupled $^{13}$C nuclear spin, which is unresolvable in traditional protocols. We use dynamical decoupling pulse sequences to selectively enhance the entanglement between the nuclear spin and a nitrogen-vacancy center electron spin, tuning the weak measurement of the nuclear spin to a strong, projective one. A nuclear spin coupled to the NV center with strength 330 kHz is read out in 200 ms with fidelity 95.5%. This work provides a general protocol for single-shot readout of weakly coupled qubits and therefore largely extends the range of physical systems for scalable quantum computing.
The main source of decoherence for an electron spin confined to a quantum dot is the hyperfine interaction with nuclear spins. To analyze this process theoretically we diagonalize the central spin Hamiltonian in the high magnetic B-field limit. Then we project the eigenstates onto an unpolarized state of the nuclear bath and find that the resulting density of states has Gaussian tails. The level spacing of the nuclear sublevels is exponentially small in the middle of each of the two electron Zeeman levels but increases super-exponentially away from the center. This suggests to select states from the wings of the distribution when the system is projected on a single eigenstate by a measurement to reduce the noise of the nuclear spin bath. This theory is valid when the external magnetic field is larger than a typical Overhauser field at high nuclear spin temperature.
A nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond is a promising sensor for nanoscale magnetic sensing. Here we report electron spin resonance (ESR) spectroscopy using a single NV center in diamond. First, using a 230 GHz ESR spectrometer, we performed ensemble ESR of a type-Ib sample crystal and identified a substitutional single nitrogen impurity as a major paramagnetic center in the sample crystal. Then, we carried out free-induction decay and spin echo measurements of the single NV center to study static and dynamic properties of nanoscale bath spins surrounding the NV center. We also measured ESR spectrum of the bath spins using double electron-electron resonance spectroscopy with the single NV center. The spectrum analysis of the NV-based ESR measurement identified that the detected spins are the nitrogen impurity spins. The experiment was also performed with several other single NV centers in the diamond sample and demonstrated that the properties of the bath spins are unique to the NV centers indicating the probe of spins in the microscopic volume using NV-based ESR. Finally, we discussed the number of spins detected by the NV-based ESR spectroscopy. By comparing the experimental result with simulation, we estimated the number of the detected spins to be $leq$ 50 spins.
We exploit ferromagnetic imprinting to create complex laterally defined regions of nuclear spin polarization in lithographically patterned MnAs/GaAs epilayers grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). A time-resolved Kerr rotation microscope with approximately 1 micron spatial resolution uses electron spin precession to directly image the GaAs nuclear polarization. These measurements indicate that the polarization varies from a maximum under magnetic mesas to zero several microns from the mesa perimeter, resulting in large (10**4 T/m) effective field gradients. The results reveal a flexible scheme for lateral engineering of spin-dependent energy landscapes in the solid state.