Room-temperature coherent coupling of single spins in diamond

By T. Gaebel, M. Domhan, I. Popa, Christoffer Wittmann, P. Neumann, Fedor Jelezko, J. Rabeau, N. Stavrias, A. Greentree, Steven Prawer and 4 more. 2006

532 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Coherent coupling between single quantum objects is at the very heart of modern quantum physics. When the coupling is strong enough to prevail over decoherence, it can be used to engineer quantum entangled states. Entangled states have attracted widespread attention because of applications to quantum computing and long-distance quantum communication. For such applications, solid-state hosts are preferred for scalability reasons, and spins are the preferred quantum system in solids because they offer long coherence times. Here we show that a single pair of strongly coupled spins in diamond, associated with a nitrogen-vacancy defect and a nitrogen atom, respectively, can be optically initialized and read out at room temperature. To effect this strong coupling, close proximity of the two spins is required, but large distances from other spins are needed to avoid deleterious decoherence. These requirements were reconciled by implanting molecular nitrogen into high-purity diamond.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Materials Chemistry

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cc5e73f8de4250518de3010f39823d0e96c84c71

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

1. Franco Nori
2. Sahel Ashhab
3. J. You
4. Z. Xiang
5. David D. Awschalom
6. Á. Gali
7. Fedor Jelezko
8. J. Wrachtrup

In Materials Chemistry

1. Á. Gali
2. L. Childress
3. David D. Awschalom
4. Fedor Jelezko
5. J. Wrachtrup
6. J. Meijer
7. S. Pezzagna
8. V. Jacques

Citations in the corpus

• Challenges for semiconductor spintronics (2007, background): “Extremely long room-temperature spin-coherence times, such as 350 μs for nitrogen vacancy centres in diamon”
• Wave–particle duality of single surface plasmon polaritons (2009, background): “and the number of quantum operations per coherence time is unusually large, even at room temperatur”
• Quantum memories: emerging applications and recent advances (2015, background): “Memories based on engineered absorption rely upon a large inhomogeneous broadening of an optical absorption line; this absorption can be structured, either statically or dynamically, to produce the desired absorption and re-emission characteristics.”
• 13C hyperfine interactions in the nitrogen-vacancy centre in diamond (2011, background): “For example, some of the data illustrated in figure 2 closely resemble observations interpreted as evidence of coupling between an NV and an electronic spin associated with a substitutional nitrogen impurity [2, 21]; 13C interactions may provide an alternative explanation.”
• Quantum register based on coupled electron spins in a room-temperature solid. (2010, background): “Recent experiments showing that nitrogen–vacancy defects can be coupled to spins of substitutional nitrogen have highlighted avenues for extending the scalability potential of the diamond quantum registe”