No Arabic abstract
Erbium ions doped into crystals have unique properties for quantum information processing, because of their optical transition at 1.5 $mu$m and of the large magnetic moment of their effective spin-1/2 electronic ground state. Most applications of erbium require however long electron spin coherence times, and this has so far been missing. Here, by selecting a host matrix with a low nuclear-spin density (CaWO$_4$) and by quenching the spectral diffusion due to residual paramagnetic impurities at millikelvin temperatures, we obtain an Er$^{3+}$ electron spin coherence time of 23 ms. This is the longest electron spin coherence time measured in a material with a natural abundance of nuclear spins and on a magnetically-sensitive transition. Our results establish Er$^{3+}$:CaWO$_4$ as a leading platform for quantum networks.
Significant advances in coherence have made superconducting quantum circuits a viable platform for fault-tolerant quantum computing. To further extend capabilities, highly coherent quantum systems could act as quantum memories for these circuits. A useful quantum memory must be rapidly addressable by qubits, while maintaining superior coherence. We demonstrate a novel superconducting microwave cavity architecture that is highly robust against major sources of loss that are encountered in the engineering of circuit QED systems. The architecture allows for near-millisecond storage of quantum states in a resonator while strong coupling between the resonator and a transmon qubit enables control, encoding, and readout at MHz rates. The observed coherence times constitute an improvement of almost an order of magnitude over those of the best available superconducting qubits. Our design is an ideal platform for studying coherent quantum optics and marks an important step towards hardware-efficient quantum computing with Josephson junction-based quantum circuits.
The coherence of electron spin qubits in semiconductor quantum dots suffers mostly from low-frequency noise. During the last decade, efforts have been devoted to mitigate such noise by material engineering, leading to substantial enhancement of the spin dephasing time for an idling qubit. However, the role of the environmental noise during spin manipulation, which determines the control fidelity, is less understood. We demonstrate an electron spin qubit whose coherence in the driven evolution is limited by high-frequency charge noise rather than the quasi-static noise inherent to any semiconductor device. We employed a feedback control technique to actively suppress the latter, demonstrating a $pi$-flip gate fidelity as high as $99.04pm 0.23,%$ in a gallium arsenide quantum dot. We show that the driven-evolution coherence is limited by the longitudinal noise at the Rabi frequency, whose spectrum resembles the $1/f$ noise observed in isotopically purified silicon qubits.
We report the nanoscale spin detection and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectrum of copper (Cu$^{2+}$) ions via double electron-electron resonance with single spins in diamond at room temperature and low magnetic fields. We measure unexpectedly narrow EPR resonances with linewidths $sim 2-3$ MHz from copper-chloride molecules dissolved in poly-lysine. We also observe coherent Rabi oscillations and hyperfine splitting from single Cu$^{2+}$ ions, which could be used for dynamic nuclear spin polarization and higher sensitivity of spin detection. We interpret and analyze these observations using both spin hamiltonian modeling of the copper-chloride molecules and numerical simulations of the predicted DEER response, and obtain a sensing volume $sim (250 text{nm})^3$. This work will open the door for copper-labeled EPR measurements under ambient conditions in bio-molecules and nano-materials.
The inhomogeneity of an electron spin ensemble as well as fluctuating environment acting upon individual spins drastically shorten the spin coherence time $T_2$ and hinder coherent spin manipulation. We show that this problem can be solved by the simultaneous application of a radiofrequency (rf) field, which stimulates coherent spin precession decoupled from an inhomogeneous environment, and periodic optical pulses, which amplify this precession. The resulting resonance, taking place when the rf field frequency approaches the laser pulse repetition frequency, has a width determined by the spin coherence time $T_2$ that is free from the inhomogeneity effects. We measure a 50-Hz-narrow electron spin resonance and milliseconds-long $T_2$ for electrons in the ground state of Ce$^{3+}$ ions in the YAG lattice at low temperatures, while the inhomogeneous spin dephasing time $T_2^*$ is only 25 ns. This study paves the way to coherent optical manipulation in spin systems decoupled from their inhomogeneous environment.
Decoherence largely limits the physical realization of qubits and its mitigation is critical to quantum science. Here, we construct a robust qubit embedded in a decoherence-protected subspace, obtained by hybridizing an applied microwave drive with the ground-state electron spin of a silicon carbide divacancy defect. The qubit is protected from magnetic, electric, and temperature fluctuations, which account for nearly all relevant decoherence channels in the solid state. This culminates in an increase of the qubits inhomogeneous dephasing time by over four orders of magnitude (to > 22 milliseconds), while its Hahn-echo coherence time approaches 64 milliseconds. Requiring few key platform-independent components, this result suggests that substantial coherence improvements can be achieved in a wide selection of quantum architectures.