arXiv:1801.01375 · New Journal of Physics
Protecting solid-state spins from a strongly coupled environment
Mo Chen, Won Kyu Calvin Sun, Kasturi Saha, Jean-Christophe Jaskula, Paola Cappellaro
Abstract
Quantum memories are critical for solid-state quantum computing devices and a good quantum memory requires both long storage time and fast read/write operations. A promising system is the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond, where the NV electronic spin serves as the computing qubit and a nearby nuclear spin as the memory qubit. Previous works used remote, weakly coupled 13 C nuclear spins, trading read/write speed for long storage time. Here we focus instead on the intrinsic strongly coupled 14 N nuclear spin. We first quantitatively understand its decoherence mechanism, identifying as its source the electronic spin that acts as a quantum fluctuator. We then propose a scheme to protect the quantum memory from the fluctuating noise by applying dynamical decoupling on the environment itself. We demonstrate a factor of 3 enhancement of the storage time in a proof-of-principle experiment, showing the potential for a quantum memory that combines fast operation with long coherence time.