Spin Phonon Coupling and Relaxation time in Lu(II) compound with 9.2GHz clock transition

TL;DR

This study uses first-principles calculations to analyze spin-phonon interactions in a Lu(II) complex qubit, revealing how phonons influence relaxation times T1 and T2 and demonstrating the protective effect of clock transitions.

Contribution

It introduces a transferable computational framework for quantitatively evaluating spin-phonon interactions and relaxation times in molecular spin qubits, focusing on a Lu(II) complex with a clock transition.

Findings

T2 shows a coherence peak near 0.43 T, matching experimental data.

T1 is mainly affected by longitudinal phonons.

T2 is strongly influenced by mid-wavelength acoustic phonons.

Abstract

Electron spin qubits operating at atomic clock transitions exhibit exceptionally long coherence times, making them promising candidates for scalable quantum information applications. In solid-state systems, interactions between qubits and lattice phonons are known to play a critical role in spin relaxation (T1) and decoherence (T2). In this work, we perform first-principles calculations on a Lu(II) complex spin qubit featuring a prominent clock transition. By employing advanced electronic structure methods, we quantitatively evaluate the influence of phonons on the hyperfine interaction, which serves as the primary spin-lattice coupling mechanism. Treating these phonon-induced variations as first-order perturbations, we apply the Redfield master equation to compute both T1 and T2, along with their temperature dependencies. For T1, we adopt a second quantization formalism to describe phonon interactions, while T2 is evaluated by explicitly integrating acoustic phonon contributions across the full Brillouin zone. Our results reproduce the experimentally observed magnetic field dependence of T2, including the coherence peak near 0.43 T, though the absolute values of T1 and T2 differ by one to two orders of magnitude. Analysis reveals that T1 is primarily governed by longitudinal phonons, whereas T2 is most strongly influenced by mid-wavelength, mid-energy acoustic modes. These findings provide a quantitative demonstration of the clock transition protective effect on spin qubit coherence and offer a transferable computational framework for evaluating spin-phonon interactions in other molecular spin qubits.