Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:2312.14310 · Physical Review Research

High-fidelity single-qubit quantum state tomography of electron- N 14 nuclear hybrid spin register in diamond using Rabi oscillations

Abhishek Shukla, Boo Carmans, Michael Petrov, Daan Vrancken, Miloš Nesládek

Published Jan 14, 2026• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We report on a quantum state characterization method, which we call Rabi-based quantum state tomography (RQST), that we have validated on single-qubit quantum states, in particular on the electron and nuclear spins of a single nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond, demonstrating high fidelities. The difference of RQST with conventional tomography methods is in the implementation of rotation operators and construction of the density matrix from the measured datasets. We demonstrate efficient quantum state control of the electron spin at room temperature with an average fidelity of 0.995 over more than 40 measurements on different states on the Bloch sphere. Also, we apply the methodology to the dark NV nuclear spin state. The state is read via the electron spin using the C-NOT two-qubit entanglement gate and demonstrates fidelities of the same order.

DOI
10.1103/j1s1-w37c

Related papers

High fidelity quantum state tomography of electron-$^{14}$N nuclear hybrid spin register in diamond using Rabi oscillations

Abhishek Shukla, Boo Carmans, Petrov, Michael +2 more

We report on a new quantum state characterisation method, which we call Rabi-based Quantum State Tomography (RQST), that we have validated on single-qubit quantum states, in particular on the electron and nuclear spins of a single nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centre in diamond, demonstrating high fidelities. The difference of RQST with conventional tomography methods is in the implementation of rotation operators and construction of density matrix from the measured data sets. We demonstrate efficient quantum state control of the electron spin at room temperature with an average fidelity of 0.995 over more than 40 measurements on different states on the Bloch sphere with a maximum fidelity of 0.99992. Also, we apply the methodology to the dark NV nuclear spin state. The state is read via the electron spin using the C-NOT two-qubit entanglement gate and demonstrate fidelities of the same order.

arXiv:2408.13349•Aug 23, 2024•0 citations

High Fidelity Single-NV Qubit Quantum State Tomography by Photoelectric Readout

Boo Carmans, Michael Petrov, Milos Nesladek

The nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond is one of the advanced candidates for solid-state quantum computing at room temperature and has proven to be competitive in terms of gate fidelity and the availability of quantum error correction codes. Ambient solid-state qubits may therefore provide quantum computing architectures as an alternative to current solutions. The NV center has an associated electronic spin that is conventionally read out via photoluminescence. As an alternative, the electrical readout is not limited by the confocal resolution of quantum microscopes, which is required in the development of NV-based quantum processors to establish a scalable individual single-spin readout on the order of a few nanometers (necessary for strong dipole-dipole coupling). In this work, the performance of photoelectric readout versus traditional optical readout is investigated to perform Quantum State Tomography measurements on a single NV center. A state fidelity of 0.995 $\pm$ 0.006 is achieved using photoelectrical spin-state readout for state reconstruction, comparable to simultaneous optical measurements. We report photocurrent signal delays, which significantly slow down the photocurrent tomography. We develop a model describing their origin, and propose strategies for their mitigation.

quant-pharXiv:2603.16502•Mar 18, 2026•0 citations

Observation of Coherent Oscillation of a Single Nuclear Spin and Realization of a Two-Qubit Conditional Quantum Gate

Fedor Jelezko, T. Gaebel, I. Popa +3 more

Rabi nutations of a single nuclear spin in a solid have been observed. The experiments were carried out on a single electron and a single 13C nuclear spin of a single nitrogen-vacancy defect center in diamond. The system was used for implementation of quantum logical NOT and a conditional two-qubit gate (CROT). Density matrix tomography of the CROT gate shows that the gate fidelity achieved in our experiments is up to 0.9, good enough to be used in quantum algorithms.

arXiv:quant-ph/0402087•Physical Review Letters•Sep 20, 2004•735 citations

Complete Quantum-State Tomography with a Local Random Field

Pengcheng Yang, Min Yu, Ralf Betzholz +2 more

Single-qubit measurements are typically insufficient for inferring arbitrary quantum states of a multiqubit system. We show that, if the system can be fully controlled by driving a single qubit, then utilizing a local random pulse is almost always sufficient for complete quantum-state tomography. Experimental demonstrations of this principle are presented using a nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond coupled to a nuclear spin, which is not directly accessible. We report the reconstruction of a highly entangled state between the electron and nuclear spin with fidelity above 95% by randomly driving and measuring the NV-center electron spin only. Beyond quantum-state tomography, we outline how this principle can be leveraged to characterize and control quantum processes in cases where the system model is not known.

arXiv:1909.09980•Physical Review Letters•Jan 10, 2020•20 citations

Quantum control of single spins and single photons in diamond

Toeno van der Sar

This thesis describes a series of experiments on the control of the optical properties of the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond, and on control of the electron and nuclear spin states associated with the NV center. The NV center is a fluorescing atomic defect center in diamond, consisting of a substitutional nitrogen atom adjacent to a vacancy in the diamond carbon lattice. The electron spin of the NV center can be initialized and read out optically, and coherently manipulated with high fidelity even at room temperature. This unique combination of properties has attracted much attention to the NV center in recent years for application in quantum information technologies. The experiments in this work focus on exploiting the intrinsic hybrid nature of the NV center. The NV center forms a hybrid spin register, as its electron spin is always coupled to the nuclear spin of its own nitrogen nucleus, and can furthermore be coupled to additional nuclear carbon-13 spins in the diamond. In addition, the electronic spin state can be mapped onto the state of a photon, in principle allowing long range transmission of quantum information and measurement-based entanglement of distant NV center registers. The long-term goal is to achieve a large scale quantum network where the different constituents each perform the task they are most well suited for: the stable nuclear spins store the quantum information, photons transfer quantum information over long distances, and the fast electron spin interfaces between spin and photon states. For measurement-based entanglement of distant NV centers it is of primary importance to maximize the emission and detection of coherent photons emitted by the NV center. Spontaneous emission can be controlled and enhanced by coupling an emitter to a photonic cavity. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 of this thesis describe experiments aimed at maximizing the coherent photon emission rate of an NV center by coupling the NV center to a photonic crystal cavity. One of the main challenges is to position a single NV center into the nanometer-sized cavity mode. Chapter 3 describes the development of a nanopositioning technique, which allows diamond nanocrystals ~50 nm in size containing single NV centers to be placed at arbitrary locations on a chip, with nanometer precision. By using a sharp etched tungsten tip, individual nanocrystals can be picked up, moved and placed under real-time imaging with an electron microscope. We explicitly demonstrate that the unique optical and spin properties of the NV center are conserved by the nanopositioning process. In chapter 4, we apply the nanopositioning technique to couple single NV centers contained in a diamond nanocrystals to gallium phosphide photonic crystal cavities. These cavities resonate in the visible with high quality factors, and are designed to have the lowest energy mode coincide with the zero-phonon line of the NV center. Efficient coupling is evidenced by a strong enhancement of NV center emission at the cavity wavelength. The high quality factor of a photonic crystal cavity is a result of careful design and fabrication. The introduction of a nanocrystal may therefore be expected to have a detrimental effect on the optical properties of a cavity. In chapter 5 we investigate the effect of a nanocrystal on the optical properties of photonic crystal cavities. Our simulations and measurements show that the effect of a nanocrystal is in fact only minor, a promising result for future work on cavity-QED systems in the solid state and with diamond defect centers in particular. Understanding and mitigating decoherence is a key challenge for quantum science and technology. The main source of decoherence for solid-state spin systems is the uncontrolled spin bath environment. Chapter 6 describes experiments that exploit quantum control of the NV center and recently developed dynamical decoupling techniques to study the properties of the surrounding bath of spins belonging to single substitutional nitrogen atoms. The coherence properties of a single NV center are affected by changes in the state of the bath spins, allowing a single NV center to be used as a probe to detect bath spin resonances and study the quantum dynamics of the spin bath. We use quantum control of the spin bath to extend the dephasing time of the NV center, important for the application of the NV center in DC magnetometry. In chapter 7 we describe the development and implementation of decoherence protected quantum gates for the hybrid spin register formed by the NV center electron spin that is coupled to the nuclear spin of its own nitrogen atom. Electron and nuclear spins evolve and decohere at vastly different rates, making it challenging to use such a hybrid system as a fully functional quantum register. We create a universal set of two-qubit quantum gates by integrating dynamical decoupling techniques into the gate operation. We demonstrate the power of our gate design by implementing for the first time Grover's quantum search algorithm on a solid-state spin register.

•Mar 27, 2012•0 citations

High-fidelity entangling gates for electron and nuclear spin qubits in diamond

Regina Finsterhoelzl, Wolf-Rüdiger Hannes, Guido Burkard

Motivated by the recent experimental progress in exploring the use of a nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond as a quantum computing platform, we propose schemes for fast and high-fidelity entangling gates on this platform. Using both analytical and numerical calculations, we demonstrate that synchronization effects between resonant and off-resonant transitions may be exploited such that spin-flip errors due to strong driving may be eliminated by adjusting the gate time or the driving field. This allows for fast, high-fidelity entangling operations between the electron spin and one or several nuclear spins. We investigate a two-qubit system where the NV center comprises a N 15 atom and a qubit-qutrit system for the case of a N 14 atom. In both cases, we predict a complete suppression of off-resonant driving errors for two-qubit gates when addressing the NV electron spin conditioned on states of nuclear spins of the nitrogen atom of the defect. Additionally, we predict fidelities > 0.99 for multiqubit gates when including the surrounding C 13 atoms in the diamond lattice in the conditioned logic.

arXiv:2403.11553•Physical review. B./Physical review. B•Jun 3, 2025•6 citations
We report on a quantum state characterization method, which we call Rabi-based quantum state tomography (RQST), that we have validated on single-qubit quantum states, in particular on the electron and nuclear spins of a single nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond, demonstrating high fidelities. The difference of RQST with conventional tomography methods is in the implementation of rotation operators and construction of the density matrix from the measured datasets. We demonstrate efficient quantum state control of the electron spin at room temperature with an average fidelity of 0.995 over more than 40 measurements on different states on the Bloch sphere. Also, we apply the methodology to the dark NV nuclear spin state. The state is read via the electron spin using the C-NOT two-qubit entanglement gate and demonstrates fidelities of the same order.
High fidelity quantum state tomography of electron-14^{14}14N nuclear hybrid spin register in diamond using Rabi oscillations
We report on a new quantum state characterisation method, which we call Rabi-based Quantum State Tomography (RQST), that we have validated on single-qubit quantum states, in particular on the electron and nuclear spins of a single nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centre in diamond, demonstrating high fidelities. The difference of RQST with conventional tomography methods is in the implementation of rotation operators and construction of density matrix from the measured data sets. We demonstrate efficient quantum state control of the electron spin at room temperature with an average fidelity of 0.995 over more than 40 measurements on different states on the Bloch sphere with a maximum fidelity of 0.99992. Also, we apply the methodology to the dark NV nuclear spin state. The state is read via the electron spin using the C-NOT two-qubit entanglement gate and demonstrate fidelities of the same order.
The nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond is one of the advanced candidates for solid-state quantum computing at room temperature and has proven to be competitive in terms of gate fidelity and the availability of quantum error correction codes. Ambient solid-state qubits may therefore provide quantum computing architectures as an alternative to current solutions. The NV center has an associated electronic spin that is conventionally read out via photoluminescence. As an alternative, the electrical readout is not limited by the confocal resolution of quantum microscopes, which is required in the development of NV-based quantum processors to establish a scalable individual single-spin readout on the order of a few nanometers (necessary for strong dipole-dipole coupling). In this work, the performance of photoelectric readout versus traditional optical readout is investigated to perform Quantum State Tomography measurements on a single NV center. A state fidelity of 0.995 ±\pm± 0.006 is achieved using photoelectrical spin-state readout for state reconstruction, comparable to simultaneous optical measurements. We report photocurrent signal delays, which significantly slow down the photocurrent tomography. We develop a model describing their origin, and propose strategies for their mitigation.
Single-qubit measurements are typically insufficient for inferring arbitrary quantum states of a multiqubit system. We show that, if the system can be fully controlled by driving a single qubit, then utilizing a local random pulse is almost always sufficient for complete quantum-state tomography. Experimental demonstrations of this principle are presented using a nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond coupled to a nuclear spin, which is not directly accessible. We report the reconstruction of a highly entangled state between the electron and nuclear spin with fidelity above 95% by randomly driving and measuring the NV-center electron spin only. Beyond quantum-state tomography, we outline how this principle can be leveraged to characterize and control quantum processes in cases where the system model is not known.
This thesis describes a series of experiments on the control of the optical properties of the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond, and on control of the electron and nuclear spin states associated with the NV center. The NV center is a fluorescing atomic defect center in diamond, consisting of a substitutional nitrogen atom adjacent to a vacancy in the diamond carbon lattice. The electron spin of the NV center can be initialized and read out optically, and coherently manipulated with high fidelity even at room temperature. This unique combination of properties has attracted much attention to the NV center in recent years for application in quantum information technologies. The experiments in this work focus on exploiting the intrinsic hybrid nature of the NV center. The NV center forms a hybrid spin register, as its electron spin is always coupled to the nuclear spin of its own nitrogen nucleus, and can furthermore be coupled to additional nuclear carbon-13 spins in the diamond. In addition, the electronic spin state can be mapped onto the state of a photon, in principle allowing long range transmission of quantum information and measurement-based entanglement of distant NV center registers. The long-term goal is to achieve a large scale quantum network where the different constituents each perform the task they are most well suited for: the stable nuclear spins store the quantum information, photons transfer quantum information over long distances, and the fast electron spin interfaces between spin and photon states. For measurement-based entanglement of distant NV centers it is of primary importance to maximize the emission and detection of coherent photons emitted by the NV center. Spontaneous emission can be controlled and enhanced by coupling an emitter to a photonic cavity. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 of this thesis describe experiments aimed at maximizing the coherent photon emission rate of an NV center by coupling the NV center to a photonic crystal cavity. One of the main challenges is to position a single NV center into the nanometer-sized cavity mode. Chapter 3 describes the development of a nanopositioning technique, which allows diamond nanocrystals ~50 nm in size containing single NV centers to be placed at arbitrary locations on a chip, with nanometer precision. By using a sharp etched tungsten tip, individual nanocrystals can be picked up, moved and placed under real-time imaging with an electron microscope. We explicitly demonstrate that the unique optical and spin properties of the NV center are conserved by the nanopositioning process. In chapter 4, we apply the nanopositioning technique to couple single NV centers contained in a diamond nanocrystals to gallium phosphide photonic crystal cavities. These cavities resonate in the visible with high quality factors, and are designed to have the lowest energy mode coincide with the zero-phonon line of the NV center. Efficient coupling is evidenced by a strong enhancement of NV center emission at the cavity wavelength. The high quality factor of a photonic crystal cavity is a result of careful design and fabrication. The introduction of a nanocrystal may therefore be expected to have a detrimental effect on the optical properties of a cavity. In chapter 5 we investigate the effect of a nanocrystal on the optical properties of photonic crystal cavities. Our simulations and measurements show that the effect of a nanocrystal is in fact only minor, a promising result for future work on cavity-QED systems in the solid state and with diamond defect centers in particular. Understanding and mitigating decoherence is a key challenge for quantum science and technology. The main source of decoherence for solid-state spin systems is the uncontrolled spin bath environment. Chapter 6 describes experiments that exploit quantum control of the NV center and recently developed dynamical decoupling techniques to study the properties of the surrounding bath of spins belonging to single substitutional nitrogen atoms. The coherence properties of a single NV center are affected by changes in the state of the bath spins, allowing a single NV center to be used as a probe to detect bath spin resonances and study the quantum dynamics of the spin bath. We use quantum control of the spin bath to extend the dephasing time of the NV center, important for the application of the NV center in DC magnetometry. In chapter 7 we describe the development and implementation of decoherence protected quantum gates for the hybrid spin register formed by the NV center electron spin that is coupled to the nuclear spin of its own nitrogen atom. Electron and nuclear spins evolve and decohere at vastly different rates, making it challenging to use such a hybrid system as a fully functional quantum register. We create a universal set of two-qubit quantum gates by integrating dynamical decoupling techniques into the gate operation. We demonstrate the power of our gate design by implementing for the first time Grover's quantum search algorithm on a solid-state spin register.
Motivated by the recent experimental progress in exploring the use of a nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond as a quantum computing platform, we propose schemes for fast and high-fidelity entangling gates on this platform. Using both analytical and numerical calculations, we demonstrate that synchronization effects between resonant and off-resonant transitions may be exploited such that spin-flip errors due to strong driving may be eliminated by adjusting the gate time or the driving field. This allows for fast, high-fidelity entangling operations between the electron spin and one or several nuclear spins. We investigate a two-qubit system where the NV center comprises a N 15 atom and a qubit-qutrit system for the case of a N 14 atom. In both cases, we predict a complete suppression of off-resonant driving errors for two-qubit gates when addressing the NV electron spin conditioned on states of nuclear spins of the nitrogen atom of the defect. Additionally, we predict fidelities > 0.99 for multiqubit gates when including the surrounding C 13 atoms in the diamond lattice in the conditioned logic.