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Simultaneous coherence enhancement of optical and microwave transitions in solid-state electronic spins

Nature Materials volume 17, pages 671–675 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

Solid-state electronic spins are extensively studied in quantum information science, as their large magnetic moments offer fast operations for computing1 and communication2,3,4, and high sensitivity for sensing5. However, electronic spins are more sensitive to magnetic noise, but engineering of their spectroscopic properties, for example, using clock transitions and isotopic engineering, can yield remarkable spin coherence times, as for electronic spins in GaAs6, donors in silicon7,8,9,10,11 and vacancy centres in diamond12,13. Here we demonstrate simultaneously induced clock transitions for both microwave and optical domains in an isotopically purified 171Yb3+:Y2SiO5 crystal, reaching coherence times of greater than 100 μs and 1 ms in the optical and microwave domains, respectively. This effect is due to the highly anisotropic hyperfine interaction, which makes each electronic–nuclear state an entangled Bell state. Our results underline the potential of 171Yb3+:Y2SiO5 for quantum processing applications relying on both optical and spin manipulation, such as optical quantum memories4,14, microwave-to-optical quantum transducers15,16, and single-spin detection17, while they should also be observable in a range of different materials with anisotropic hyperfine interactions.

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Fig. 1: Energy levels and absorption profile.
Fig. 2: Coherence enhancement under zero magnetic field.
Fig. 3: Low-magnetic-field-assisted spin coherence enhancement.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge funding from the Swiss FNS NCCR programme Quantum Science Technology (QSIT) and FNS research project no. 172590, EUs H2020 programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie project QCALL (GA 675662), EUs FP7 programme under the ERC AdG project MEC (GA 339198), ANR under grant agreement no. 145-CE26-0037-01 (DISCRYS) and NanoK project RECTUS and the IMTO Cancer AVIESAN (Cancer Plan, C16027HS, MALT).

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Antonio Ortu, Alexey Tiranov.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Groupe de Physique Appliquée, Université de Genève, Genève, Switzerland

    Antonio Ortu, Alexey Tiranov, Florian Fröwis, Nicolas Gisin & Mikael Afzelius

  2. Chimie ParisTech, PSL University, CNRS, Institut de Recherche de Chimie Paris, Paris, France

    Sacha Welinski, Alban Ferrier & Philippe Goldner

  3. Faculté des Sciences et Ingénierie, Sorbonne Université, Paris, France

    Alban Ferrier

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Contributions

S.W., A.F. and P.G. grew the crystal sample, measured and analysed the absorption spectrum. A.T. and M.A. conceived and planned the optical and spin echo experiments, which were mainly carried out by A.O. and A.T. with contributions from S.W. and M.A. The theoretical model was developed by F.F, A.T, S.W., P.G. and M.A. The manuscript was mainly written by A.O., A.T. and M.A., with contributions from all the authors. N.G. and M.A. provided overall oversight of the project.

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Correspondence to Mikael Afzelius.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Notes 1–3, Supplementary Figures 1–4

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Ortu, A., Tiranov, A., Welinski, S. et al. Simultaneous coherence enhancement of optical and microwave transitions in solid-state electronic spins. Nature Mater 17, 671–675 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-018-0138-x

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