Enhanced molecular spin-photon coupling at superconducting nanoconstrictions

TL;DR

This study demonstrates enhanced coupling between molecular spins and superconducting resonators using nanoconstrictions, enabling potential advances in nanoscale magnetic spectroscopy and quantum computing architectures.

Contribution

The paper introduces a method combining nanolithography and molecular deposition to significantly boost spin-photon coupling at the nanoscale.

Findings

Coupling strength increases with decreasing transmission line width.

Maximum individual spin coupling exceeds 1 kHz at nanoconstrictions.

Collective coupling scales with the square root of the number of spins.

Abstract

We combine top-down and bottom-up nanolithography to optimize the coupling of small molecular spin ensembles to $1.4$ GHz on-chip superconducting resonators. Nanoscopic constrictions, fabricated with a focused ion beam at the central transmission line, locally concentrate the microwave magnetic field. Drops of free-radical molecules have been deposited from solution onto the circuits. For the smallest ones, the molecules were delivered at the relevant circuit areas by means of an atomic force microscope. The number of spins $N_{\rm eff}$ effectively coupled to each device was accurately determined combining Scanning Electron and Atomic Force Microscopies. The collective spin-photon coupling constant has been determined for samples with $N_{\rm eff}$ ranging between $2 \times 10^{6}$ and $10^{12}$ spins, and for temperatures down to $44$ mK. The results show the well-known collective enhancement of the coupling proportional to the square root of $N_{\rm eff}$. The average coupling of individual spins is enhanced by more than four orders of magnitude (from $4$ mHz up to above $180$ Hz) when the transmission line width is reduced from $400$ microns down to $42$ nm, and reaches maximum values near $1$ kHz for molecules located on the smallest nanoconstrictions. This result opens promising avenues for the realization of magnetic spectroscopy experiments at the nanoscale and for the development of hybrid quantum computation architectures based on molecular spin qubits.