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Control of the millisecond spin lifetime of an electrically probed atom

Nature Physics volume 13, pages 403–407 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

Electrical control and readout of magnetic states is an important goal in spintronics. But electrical access to quantum spin systems comes at the cost of coupling to electrodes, which reduces the spin lifetimes through relaxation to electron–hole pairs. Here we report an electrically probed single-atom spin that is long-lived thanks to engineering the coupling of individual iron atoms to the nearby metallic electrodes. Using spin-polarized scanning tunnelling microscopy, we show that the excited spin state of these atoms persists for more than ten milliseconds. The lifetime can be tuned by varying the distance to the microscope probe tip—acting as one electrode—and by changing the thickness of the insulating film which separates the atom from the underlying electrode. The cross-section for spin-flip scattering is so small that many thousands of electrons can probe the spin state projectively before it relaxes. Using all-electrical pump–probe spectroscopy, we measure the lifetime of the atom for different tip–atom distances and determine the intrinsic lifetime as a function of the insulator thickness. We explain the tuning of the spin lifetime in terms of the conductance to each of the electrodes, which provides a method to maximize the electrical readout signal for a given lifetime.

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Figure 1: Spin-polarized readout of single-atom Fe spins on a surface.
Figure 2: Control of the spin lifetime with STM tip proximity.
Figure 3: Spin lifetime as a function of applied magnetic field.
Figure 4: Tuning the substrate conductance and lifetime by film thickness.

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Acknowledgements

We thank B. Melior for expert technical assistance, A. Macdonald, S. Rolf-Pissarczyk and R. M. Macfarlane for helpful discussions, and P. Willke, F. Natterer and T. Greber for providing comments on the manuscript. We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Office of Naval Research. N.R. acknowledges financial support from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). K.Y. acknowledges support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61471337). W.P. thanks the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada for fellowship support.

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Author notes

  1. Andreas J. Heinrich

    Present address: Present address: Physics Department, Ewha Womans University, 03760 Seoul, Republic of Korea.,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. IBM Research Division, Almaden Research Center, 650 Harry Road, San Jose, California 95120, USA

    William Paul, Kai Yang, Susanne Baumann, Taeyoung Choi, Christopher P. Lutz & Andreas J. Heinrich

  2. School of Physical Sciences and Key Laboratory of Vacuum Physics, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China

    Kai Yang

  3. Department of Physics, University of Basel, Klingelbergstrasse 82, CH-4056 Basel, Switzerland

    Susanne Baumann

  4. Department of Physics, University of Hamburg, 20355 Hamburg, Germany

    Niklas Romming

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Contributions

W.P., K.Y., S.B., C.P.L. and A.J.H. designed the experiment. W.P., K.Y., S.B. and N.R. carried out the STM measurements. W.P. and K.Y. performed the analysis, W.P. and C.P.L. designed and implemented the pump–probe protocols, C.P.L. and W.P. developed the model, and W.P. carried out the calculations. W.P. and C.P.L. wrote the manuscript. All authors discussed the results and edited the manuscript.

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Correspondence to William Paul.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Paul, W., Yang, K., Baumann, S. et al. Control of the millisecond spin lifetime of an electrically probed atom. Nature Phys 13, 403–407 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3965

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