Hybrid qubit systems combining electronic spins with nearby (proximate) nuclear spin registers offer a promising avenue towards quantum information processing, with even multi-spin error correction protocols recently demonstrated in diamond. However,
for the important platform offered by spins of donor atoms in cryogenically-cooled silicon,decoherence mechanisms of $^{29}$Si proximate nuclear spins are not yet well understood.The reason is partly because proximate spins lie within a so-called frozen core region where the donor electronic hyperfine interaction strongly suppresses nuclear dynamics. We investigate the decoherence of a central proximate nuclear qubit arising from quantum spin baths outside, as well as inside, the frozen core around the donor electron. We consider the effect of a very large nuclear spin bath comprising many ($gtrsim 10^8$) weakly contributing pairs outside the frozen core. We also propose that there may be an important contribution from a few (of order $100$) symmetrically sited nuclear spin pairs (equivalent pairs), which were not previously considered as their effect is negligible outside the frozen core. If equivalent pairs represent a measurable source of decoherence, nuclear coherence decays could provide sensitive probes of the symmetries of electronic wavefunctions. For the phosphorus donor system, we obtain $T_{2n}$ values of order 1 second for both the far bath and equivalent pair models, confirming the suitability of proximate nuclei in silicon as very long-lived spin qubits.
We study theoretically the photoelectron emission in noble gases using plasmonic enhanced near-fields. We demonstrate that these fields have a great potential to generate high energy electrons by direct mid-infrared laser pulses of the current femtos
econd oscillator. Typically, these fields appear in the surroundings of plasmonic nanostructures, having different geometrical shape such as bow-ties, metallic waveguides, metal nanoparticles and nanotips, when illuminated by a short laser pulse. In here, we consider metal nanospheres, in which the spatial decay of the near-field of the isolated nanoparticle can be approximated by an exponential function according to recent attosecond streaking measurements. We establish that the strong nonhomogeneous character of the enhanced near-field plays an important role in the above threshold ionization (ATI) process and leads to a significant extension in the photoelectron spectra. In this work, we employ the time dependent Schrodinger equation in reduced dimensions to calculate the photoelectron emission of xenon atoms in such enhanced near-field. Our findings are supported by classical calculations.
At the free-electron laser FLASH, multiple ionization of neon atoms was quantitatively investigated at 93.0 eV and 90.5 eV photon energy. For ion charge states up to 6+, we compare the respective absolute photoionization yields with results from a mi
nimal model and an elaborate description. Both approaches are based on rate equations and take into acccout a Gaussian spatial intensity distribution of the laser beam. From the comparison we conclude, that photoionization up to a charge of 5+ can be described by the minimal model. For higher charges, the experimental ionization yields systematically exceed the elaborate rate based prediction.
