Scaling of decoherence in wide NMR quantum registers

Among the most important parameters for the usefulness of quantum computers are the size of the quantum register and the decoherence time for the quantum information. The decoherence time is expected to get shorter with the number of correlated qubits, but experimental data are only available for small numbers of qubits. Solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance allows one to correlate large numbers of qubits (several hundred) and measure their decoherence rates. We use a modified magnetic dipole-dipole interaction to correlate the proton spins in a solid sample and observe the decay of the resulting highly correlated states. By systematically varying the number of correlated spins, we measure the increase of the decoherence rate with the size of the quantum register.     

Electron spin decoherence in isotope-enriched silicon

Silicon is promising for spin-based quantum computation because nuclear spins, a source of magnetic noise, may be eliminated through isotopic enrichment. Long spin decoherence times T2 have been measured in isotope-enriched silicon but come far short of the T2=2T1 limit. The effect of nuclear spins on T2 is well established. However, the effect of background electron spins from ever present residual phosphorus impurities in silicon can also produce significant decoherence. We study spin decoherence decay as a function of donor concentration, 29Si concentration, and temperature using cluster expansion techniques specifically adapted to the problem of a sparse dipolarly coupled electron spin bath. Our results agree with the existing experimental spin echo data in Si:P and establish the importance of background dopants as the ultimate decoherence mechanism in isotope-enriched silicon.     

Electron and nuclear spin dynamics in antiferromagnetic molecular rings

We study theoretically the spin dynamics of antiferromagnetic molecular rings, such as the ferric wheel Fe10. For a single nuclear or impurity spin coupled to one of the electron spins of the ring, we calculate nuclear and electronic spin correlation functions and show that nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and electron spin resonance (ESR) techniques can be used to detect coherent tunneling of the Néel vector in these rings. The location of the NMR/ESR resonances gives the tunnel splitting and its linewidth an upper bound on the decoherence rate of the electron spin dynamics. We illustrate the experimental feasibility of our proposal with estimates for Fe10 molecules.     

Nonlocal advantage of quantum coherence and entanglement of two spins under intrinsic decoherence

We investigate the nonlocal advantage of quantum coherence(NAQC) and entanglement for two spins coupled via the Heisenberg interaction and under the intrinsic decoherence. Solutions of this decoherence model for the initial spin-1/2 and spin-1 maximally entangled states are obtained, based on which we calculate the NAQC and entanglement. In the weak region of magnetic field, the NAQC behaves as a damped oscillation with the time evolves, while the entanglement decays exponentially(behaves as a damped oscillation) for the spin-1/2(spin-1) case. Moreover, the decay of both the NAQC and entanglement can be suppressed significantly by tuning the magnetic field and anisotropy of the spin interaction to some decoherence-rate-determined optimal values.     

The effect of magnetic impurity scattering in Au films

The magnetic impurity scattering plays an important role in the phase coherence behavior of thin films.By using the thickness and disorder dependences of the low temperature logarithmic anomaly in resistivity we are able to determine the concentration of magnetic impurities in Au films and demonstrate that the low temperature saturation or plateau in phase decoherence time is closely related with the Kondo effect.     

Spin ordering in semiconductor heterostructures with ferromagnetic δ layers

The magnetic properties of a magnetic-metal δ layer placed in a nonmagnetic nondegenerate semiconductor matrix are studied theoretically. The diffusion-induced spread of the δ layer, which is inevitable during δ doping, is taken into account, and a model is proposed in which this layer consists of a thin core enriched in metal atoms and a smeared periphery depleted in metal atoms. The exchange and potential scattering of carriers by the core causes confinement states in the form of two-dimensional spin-polarized sub-bands inside the energy gap of the semiconductor. The mechanism of the indirect exchange between impurity spins located in the strongly dilute peripheral region of the δ layer through partly filled confinement states is analyzed. In the case of a ferromagnetic core, impurity spins are oriented along (or opposite to) the core magnetization owing to carrier polarization on the confinement states. The magnetic configuration of impurity spins at the periphery of the δ layer is phenomenologically studied with allowance for the confinement mechanism of the interaction of impurity spins and the superexchange through the deep states in the semiconductor matrix.     

Entanglement generation in a spin chain by a pulsed magnetic field: analytical treatment

Dynamics of the one-dimensional open Ising chain under influence of transverse magnetic field applied in form of π-pulses is studied. It is shown how the application of a specific sequence of such instant kicks to selective spins stimulates arising of perfect dynamical pairwise entanglement between ends of the spin chain. Analytic formulas for the concurrence dynamics are derived. It is also shown that the time required to perfectly entangle the ends of the chains grows linearly with the number of spins in the chain. The effect of the phase decoherence is briefly analyzed.     

Role of spin noise in the detection of nanoscale ensembles of nuclear spins

When probing nuclear spins in materials on the nanometer scale, random fluctuations of the spin polarization will exceed the mean Boltzmann polarization for sample volumes below about (100 nm){3}. In this Letter, we use magnetic resonance force microscopy to observe nuclear spin fluctuations in real time. We show how reproducible measurements of the polarization variance can be obtained by controlling the spin correlation time and rapidly sampling a large number of independent spin configurations. This allows significant improvement in the signal-to-noise ratio for nanometer-scale magnetic resonance imaging.     

Enhancement of electron spin coherence by optical preparation of nuclear spins

We study a large ensemble of nuclear spins interacting with a single electron spin in a quantum dot under optical excitation and photon detection. At the two-photon resonance between the two electron-spin states, the detection of light scattering from the intermediate exciton state acts as a weak quantum measurement of the effective magnetic (Overhauser) field due to the nuclear spins. In a coherent population trapping state without light scattering, the nuclear state is projected into an eigenstate of the Overhauser field operator, and electron decoherence due to nuclear spins is suppressed: We show that this limit can be approached by adapting the driving frequencies when a photon is detected. We use a Lindblad equation to describe the driven system under photon emission and detection. Numerically, we find an increase of the electron coherence time from 5 to 500 ns after a preparation time of 10 micros.     

Muon spin relaxation and susceptibility studies of the pure and diluted spin 1/2 kagomé-like lattice system (CuxZn(1-x))3V2O7(OH2) 2H2O

Muon spin relaxation and magnetic susceptibility measurements have been performed on the pure and diluted spin 1/2 kagomé system (CuxZn(1-x))3V2O7(OH)2 2H2O. In the pure x=1 system we found a slowing down of Cu spin fluctuations with decreasing temperature towards T approximately 1 K, followed by slow and nearly temperature-independent spin fluctuations persisting down to T=50 mK, indicative of quantum fluctuations. No indication of static spin freezing was detected in either of the pure (x=1.0) or diluted samples. The observed magnitude of fluctuating fields indicates that the slow spin fluctuations represent an intrinsic property of kagomé network rather than impurity spins.     

Novel strategy for database searching in spin liouville space by NMR ensemble computing

Quantum computing by nuclear magnetic resonance using pseudopure spin states is bound by the maximal speed of quantum computing algorithms operating on pure states. In contrast to these quantum computing algorithms, a novel algorithm for searching an unsorted database is presented here that operates on truly mixed states in spin Liouville space. It provides an exponential speedup over Grover's quantum search algorithm with the sensitivity scaling exponentially with the number of spins, as for pseudopure state implementations. The minimal decoherence time required is exponentially shorter than that for Grover's algorithm.     

Environment-assisted precision measurement

We describe a method to enhance the sensitivity of precision measurements that takes advantage of the environment of a quantum sensor to amplify the response of the sensor to weak external perturbations. An individual qubit is used to sense the dynamics of surrounding ancillary qubits, which are in turn affected by the external field to be measured. The resulting sensitivity enhancement is determined by the number of ancillas that are coupled strongly to the sensor qubit; it does not depend on the exact values of the coupling strengths and is resilient to many forms of decoherence. The method achieves nearly Heisenberg-limited precision measurement, using a novel class of entangled states. We discuss specific applications to improve clock sensitivity using trapped ions and magnetic sensing based on electronic spins in diamond.     

Re-entrant superconductivity from magnetic impurity interactions

The scattering of electrons in the superconducting phase is calculated including the exchange of magnetic impurity pairs. Providing that the RKKY coupling favors ferromagnetic alignment of the impurity spins, the superconducting transition temperature is found to exhibit a re-entrant behavior as a function of the impurity concentration.     

Magnetic properties of hydrothermally synthesized BiFeO3 nanoparticles

BiFeO₃ nanoparticles with diameters in the range 65–90 nm were prepared using a hydrothermal technique. Low-temperature magnetic measurements showed ferromagnetic behavior of the samples below a certain temperature. The magnetization values were drastically reduced in the case of samples having larger diameters. This was explained as arising due to a reduction of the number of uncompensated spins associated with Fe³⁺ ions as particle diameter was increased. A surface spin disorder is believed to be responsible for this property.     

Intrinsic spin fluctuations reveal the dynamical response function of holes coupled to nuclear spin baths in (In,Ga)As quantum dots

The problem of how single central spins interact with a nuclear spin bath is essential for understanding decoherence and relaxation in many quantum systems, yet is highly nontrivial owing to the many-body couplings involved. Different models yield widely varying time scales and dynamical responses (exponential, power-law, gaussian, etc.). Here we detect the small random fluctuations of central spins in thermal equilibrium [holes in singly charged (In,Ga)As quantum dots] to reveal the time scales and functional form of bath-induced spin relaxation. This spin noise indicates long (400 ns) spin correlation times at a zero magnetic field that increase to ～5 μs as dominant hole-nuclear relaxation channels are suppressed with small (100 G) applied fields. Concomitantly, the noise line shape evolves from Lorentzian to power law, indicating a crossover from exponential to slow [～1/log(t)] dynamics.     

Anomalous Hall effect in a two dimensional electron gas with magnetic impurities

Magnetic impurities play an important role in many spintronics-related materials. Motivated by this fact, we study the anomalous Hall effect in the presence of magnetic impurities, focusing on two-dimensional electron systems with Rashba spin-orbit coupling. We find a highly nonlinear dependence on the impurity polarization, including possible sign changes. At small impurity magnetizations, this is a consequence of the remarkable result that the linear term is independent of the spin-orbit coupling strength. Near saturation of the impurity spins, the anomalous Hall conductivity can be resonantly enhanced, due to interference between potential and magnetic scattering.     

Onsager-Zerlegung für einen Defektspin in der linearen Spinkette mitX-Y-Kopplung im kritischen Magnetfeld

The autocorrelation function of an impurity spin in an infinite chain of spins withX-Y-coupling moving in a critical magnetic field is shown to be an example of “Onsager separation” with a hydrodynamic branch point singularity. By reason of this type of singularity the hydrodynamic part of the autocorrelation function is longranged in time. It appears that the phenomenological part of the statistical entropy production associated with the impurity spin relaxation in the critical field is positive.     

Decoherence and equilibration under nondestructive measurements

The evolution of observable quantities of finite quantum systems is analyzed when the latter are subject to nondestructive measurements. The type and number of measurements characterize the level of decoherence produced in the system. A finite number of instantaneous measurements leads to only a partial decoherence. But infinite number of such measurements yields complete decoherence and equilibration. Continuous measurements result in partial decoherence in finite time, but produce complete decoherence and equilibration as time tends to infinity. Resulting equilibrium states are characterized by representative statistical ensembles that, generally, retain information on initial conditions. Any system, to be observable, necessarily requires the presence of measurements, whose large number leads to the system equilibration and decoherence.     

Quantum computing with spin cluster qubits

We study the low energy states of finite spin chains with isotropic (Heisenberg) and anisotropic (XY and Ising-like) antiferromagnetic exchange interaction with uniform and nonuniform coupling constants. We show that for an odd number of sites a spin cluster qubit can be defined in terms of the ground state doublet. This qubit is remarkably insensitive to the placement and coupling anisotropy of spins within the cluster. One- and two-qubit quantum gates can be generated by magnetic fields and intercluster exchange, and leakage during quantum gate operation is small. Spin cluster qubits inherit the long decoherence times and short gate operation times of single spins. Control of single spins is hence not necessary for the realization of universal quantum gates.     

Effect of magnetic doping on the electronic states of Ni

Angle-resolved photoemission is used to determine the change in the electronic states of Ni induced by doping with Fe and Cr. Well-defined spin and k states are selected using high energy and k resolution combined with single crystal alloys. Iron suppresses the mean free path of minority spins only, while chromium suppresses both spins and decreases the magnetic splitting. The strong variation of these effects from one impurity to the other supports the concept of magnetic doping.