Protection of excited spin states by a superconducting energy gap

Abstract

The latest concepts for quantum computing and data storage envision to address and manipulate single spins. A limitation for single atoms or molecules in contact to a metal surface are the short lifetime of excited spin states, typically picoseconds, due to the exchange of energy and angular momentum with the itinerant electrons of the substrate [1-4]. Here we show that paramagnetic molecules on a superconducting substrate exhibit excited spin states with a lifetime of approximately 10 ns. We ascribe this increase in lifetime by orders of magnitude to the depletion of electronic states within the energy gap at the Fermi level. This prohibits pathways of energy relaxation into the substrate and allows for electrically pumping the magnetic molecule into higher spin states, making superconducting substrates premium candidates for spin manipulation. We further show that the proximity of the scanning tunneling microscope tip modifies the magnetic anisotropy.

References in corpus (2)

• Mechanical Control of Spin States in Spin-1 Molecules and the Underscreened Kondo Effect
• Magnetic Anisotropy and Magnetization Dynamics of Individual Atoms and Clusters of Fe and Co on Pt(111)

Cited by in corpus (27)

• Spin decoherence of magnetic atoms on surfaces
• Quantum spins and hybridization in artificially-constructed chains of magnetic adatoms on a superconductor
• Majorana Fermions in Magnetic Chains
• Yu-Shiba-Rusinov states in real metals
• Proximity effect on spin-dependent conductance and thermopower of correlated quantum dots
• Full counting statistics and shot noise of cotunneling in quantum dots and single-molecule transistors
• Coupled Yu-Shiba-Rusinov states induced by a many-body molecular spin on a superconductor
• Systematics of molecular self-assembled networks at topological insulators surfaces
• Transverse dynamical magnetic susceptibilities from regular static density functional theory: Evaluation of damping and g-shifts of spin-excitations
• Superconducting proximity effect and zero-bias anomaly in transport through quantum dots weakly attached to ferromagnetic leads
• Pair excitations of a quantum spin on a proximitized superconductor
• Dynamical Negative Differential Resistance in Antiferromagnetically Coupled Few-Atom Spin-Chains
• Quantum Yu-Shiba-Rusinov dimers
• Moiré tuning of spin excitations: Individual Fe atoms on MoS${}_2$/Au(111)
• Kondo physics in double quantum dot based Cooper pair splitters
• Extending the spin excitation lifetime of a magnetic molecule on a proximitized superconductor
• Anomalous excitations of atomically crafted quantum magnets
• Theory of spin inelastic tunneling spectroscopy for superconductor-superconductor and superconductor-metal junctions
• Relaxation and decoherence of qubits encoded in collective states of engineered magnetic structures
• Controllable Andreev Bound States in Bilayer Graphene Josephson Junction from Short to Long Junction Limits
• Spin Inelastic Electron Tunneling Spectroscopy on Local Magnetic Moment Embedded in Josephson Junction
• Emergent magnetism as a cooperative effect of interactions and reservoir
• Quantum spin driven Yu-Shiba-Rusinov multiplets and fermion-parity-preserving phase transition in K${}_3$C${}_{60}$
• Optically and electrically controllable adatom spin-orbital dynamics in transition metal dichalcogenides
• Spin Excitations of High Spin Iron(II) in Metal-Organic Chains on Metal and Superconductor
• Spatially Dependent in-Gap States Induced by Andreev Tunneling through a Single Electronic State
• Symmetry mediated tunable molecular magnetism on a 2D material