Inelastic electron tunneling spectroscopy of a single nuclear spin

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that inelastic electron tunneling spectroscopy (IETS) can detect and measure the energy levels of a single nuclear spin in systems like magnetic adatoms and doped silicon, enabling nuclear spin resonance detection.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of IETS for single nuclear spin detection and provides simulations showing its effectiveness in resolving nuclear spin states.

Findings

IETS can resolve hyperfine-split energy levels of a single nuclear spin.

Transport channels opened by hyperfine coupling are detectable at accessible temperatures.

The method enables transport-detected single nuclear spin resonance.

Abstract

Detection of a single nuclear spin constitutes an outstanding problem in different fields of physics such as quantum computing or magnetic imaging. Here we show that the energy levels of a single nuclear spin can be measured by means of inelastic electron tunneling spectroscopy (IETS). We consider two different systems, a magnetic adatom probed with STM and a single Bi dopant in a Silicon nanotransistor. We find that the hyperfine coupling opens new transport channels which can be resolved at experimentally accessible temperatures. Our simulations evince that IETS yield information about the occupation of the nuclear spin states, paving the way towards transport-detected single nuclear spin resonance.