Towards a large-scale quantum simulator on diamond surface at room temperature

TL;DR

This paper proposes a scalable quantum simulator using nuclear spins on diamond surfaces, operable at room temperature, enabling the study of complex quantum many-body systems without extreme cooling requirements.

Contribution

It introduces a novel architecture for a room-temperature quantum simulator based on nuclear spins on diamond surfaces, integrating NV centers for control and readout.

Findings

Potential for large-scale quantum simulation at room temperature.

Utilizes nuclear spins with long coherence times on diamond surfaces.

Capable of simulating various strongly-correlated models with long-range interactions.

Abstract

Strongly-correlated quantum many-body systems exhibits a variety of exotic phases with long-range quantum correlations, such as spin liquids and supersolids. Despite the rapid increase in computational power of modern computers, the numerical simulation of these complex systems becomes intractable even for a few dozens of particles. Feynman's idea of quantum simulators offers an innovative way to bypass this computational barrier. However, the proposed realizations of such devices either require very low temperatures (ultracold gases in optical lattices, trapped ions, superconducting devices) and considerable technological effort, or are extremely hard to scale in practice (NMR, linear optics). In this work, we propose a new architecture for a scalable quantum simulator that can operate at room temperature. It consists of strongly-interacting nuclear spins attached to the diamond surface by its direct chemical treatment, or by means of a functionalized graphene sheet. The initialization, control and read-out of this quantum simulator can be accomplished with nitrogen-vacancy centers implanted in diamond. The system can be engineered to simulate a wide variety of interesting strongly-correlated models with long-range dipole-dipole interactions. Due to the superior coherence time of nuclear spins and nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond, our proposal offers new opportunities towards large-scale quantum simulation at room temperatures.