Coherent properties of single rare-earth spin qubits

Abstract

Rare-earth-doped crystals are excellent hardware for quantum storage of optical information. Additional functionality of these materials is added by their waveguiding properties allowing for on-chip photonic networks. However, detection and coherent properties of rare-earth single-spin qubits have not been demonstrated so far. Here, we present experimental results on high-fidelity optical initialization, effcient coherent manipulation, and optical readout of a single electron spin of Ce${}^{3+}$ ion in a YAG crystal. Under dynamic decoupling, spin coherence lifetime reaches $T_2$=2 ms and is almost limited by the measured spin-lattice relaxation time $T_1$=3.8 ms. Strong hyperfine coupling to aluminium nuclear spins suggests that cerium electron spins can be exploited as an interface between photons and long-lived nuclear spin memory. Combined with high brightness of Ce${}^{3+}$ emission and a possibility of creating photonic circuits out of the host material, this makes cerium spins an interesting option for integrated quantum photonics.

10 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Universal dynamical decoupling of a single solid-state spin from a spin bath
• Quantum Storage of Photonic Entanglement in a Crystal
• Quantum many-body theory of qubit decoherence in a finite-size spin bath

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Engineering near infrared single photon emitters in ultrapure silicon carbide
• Quantum many-body theory for electron spin decoherence in nanoscale nuclear spin baths
• Coherent precession of an individual 5/2 spin
• Quantum processing with ensembles of rare earth ions in a stoichiometric crystal
• Non-destructive photon detection using a single rare earth ion coupled to a photonic cavity
• Super-resolution microscopy of single rare-earth emitters
• Electron spin dynamics of Ce${}^{3+}$ ions in YAG crystals studied by pulse-EPR and pump-probe Faraday rotation
• Development of Yttrium alloy ion source and its application in nanofabrication