Quantum control of proximal spins using nanoscale magnetic resonance imaging

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a novel nanoscale magnetic resonance imaging technique that achieves coherent control and imaging of individual electron spins with nanometer resolution, significantly advancing spintronics and quantum sensing capabilities.

Contribution

It introduces a scanning magnetic field-gradient MRI method for coherent control of proximal spins with nanometric resolution, surpassing traditional optical techniques.

Findings

Achieved nanometric resolution in imaging and manipulating individual NV center spins.

Demonstrated nearly two orders of magnitude improvement over optical diffraction limits.

Enabled applications in materials characterization and nanoscale magnetometry.

Abstract

Quantum control of individual spins in condensed matter systems is an emerging field with wide-ranging applications in spintronics, quantum computation, and sensitive magnetometry. Recent experiments have demonstrated the ability to address and manipulate single electron spins through either optical or electrical techniques. However, it is a challenge to extend individual spin control to nanoscale multi-electron systems, as individual spins are often irresolvable with existing methods. Here we demonstrate that coherent individual spin control can be achieved with few-nm resolution for proximal electron spins by performing single-spin magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which is realized via a scanning magnetic field gradient that is both strong enough to achieve nanometric spatial resolution and sufficiently stable for coherent spin manipulations. We apply this scanning field-gradient MRI technique to electronic spins in nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond and achieve nanometric resolution in imaging, characterization, and manipulation of individual spins. For NV centers, our results in individual spin control demonstrate an improvement of nearly two orders of magnitude in spatial resolution compared to conventional optical diffraction-limited techniques. This scanning-field-gradient microscope enables a wide range of applications including materials characterization, spin entanglement, and nanoscale magnetometry.