Noise Electrometry of Polar and Dielectric Materials

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel method using a qubit sensor to measure electrical noise from polarization fluctuations in polar and dielectric materials, enabling new insights into their properties across various frequencies and length scales.

Contribution

It introduces a new technique to characterize dielectric properties via qubit relaxation rates influenced by nearby materials, expanding the toolkit for material analysis.

Findings

Demonstrates the dependence of relaxation rate on distance, frequency, and temperature.

Shows the method can probe collective polar excitations and phase transitions.

Establishes feasibility for experimental implementation.

Abstract

A qubit sensor with an electric dipole moment acquires an additional contribution to its depolarization rate when it is placed in the vicinity of a polar or dielectric material as a consequence of electrical noise arising from polarization fluctuations in the latter. Here, we characterize this relaxation rate as a function of experimentally tunable parameters such as sample-probe distance, probe-frequency, and temperature, and demonstrate that it offers a window into dielectric properties of insulating materials over a wide range of frequencies and length scales. We discuss the experimental feasibility of our proposal and illustrate its ability to probe a variety of phenomena, ranging from collective polar excitations to phase transitions and disorder-dominated physics in relaxor ferroelectrics. Our proposal paves the way for a novel table-top probe of polar and dielectric materials in a parameter regime complementary to existing tools and techniques.