Quantum many body interactions in a two dimensional solid state system
Final Report Abstract
The scope of this project was to study quantum many body interactions in a two-dimensional solid-state system. These interactions are related to interesting physical phenomena like quantum phase transitions, spin frustration and spin liquids, which are becoming important for quantum technology applications. The physical implementation has been proposed in 2013 and is based on a 2D array nuclear spins on a diamond surface. A single Nitrogen- Vacancy (NV) centre (a prominent quantum sensor) few nanometres below the surface is used both for initialisation of the spins and also for reading out their nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) signal and coherent control is done with radio frequency pulses. Simulations show, that the nuclear spin array can act as a quantum simulator, where quantum magnetic phase transitions and quantum phases of superfluids and supersolids could be realised. The originally proposed realisation with fluorine atoms terminating the diamond surface could not be achieved, so here the goal was to utilise 2D flakes of van der Waals materials. The latter naturally provide an atomically thick two-dimensional structure and by selecting atoms with suitable nuclear spins, the desired array could be obtained. The most promising candidate is phosphorene due to its optical transparency in the required spectral region and due to the higher magnetic moment of 31P having nuclear spin ½ with 100 % natural abundance. However, this material is unstable at ambient conditions, which lead us to develop a confocal microscope in a glove box for performing experiments under controlled gas atmosphere and humidity. The phosphorene flakes on the diamond surface were stable, but the NMR signal detected with the NVs turned out to have a different origin. Further investigations revealed, the signal was originating from the NV’s themselves (often called ambiguous resonances) and could be reproducibly simulated. We have created a database of our simulations, which is publicly available in order to help other researcher explaining their data. Another interesting result from those experiments was that the NV centres became unstable in the nitrogen gas environment and could be studying after few hours. This was very surprising, since the opposite effect was expected and currently this issue is still under investigation. Another approach we have attempted was to fabricate NV ensembles via nano-structuring diamond crystals. The resulting nano-pillars increased the photon collection efficiency by a factor of 2.5, but the coherence time of the NV’s electron spins was too short for a quantum simulator application.
Publications
-
Optical and Spin Properties of NV Center Ensembles in Diamond Nano-Pillars. Nanomaterials, 12(9), 1516.
Volkova, Kseniia; Heupel, Julia; Trofimov, Sergei; Betz, Fridtjof; Colom, Rémi; MacQueen, Rowan W.; Akhundzada, Sapida; Reginka, Meike; Ehresmann, Arno; Reithmaier, Johann Peter; Burger, Sven; Popov, Cyril & Naydenov, Boris
-
Combined Confocal‐Atomic‐Force Microscope Setup for Quantum Sensing Applications with Sub‐diffractional Spatial Resolution. physica status solidi (a), 222(5).
Trofimov, Sergei & Naydenov, Boris
-
Photon-emission statistics for single nitrogen-vacancy centers. Physical Review Applied, 22(1).
Panadero, I.; Espinós, H.; Tsunaki, L.; Volkova, K.; Tobalina, A.; Casanova, J.; Acedo, P.; Naydenov, B.; Puebla, R. & Torrontegui, E.
-
A glovebox-integrated confocal microscope for quantum sensing in inert atmosphere. Review of Scientific Instruments, 96(1).
Volkova, Kseniia; Kumar, Abhijeet M.; Bolotin, Kirill & Naydenov, Boris
-
Ambiguous resonances in multipulse quantum sensing with nitrogen-vacancy centers. Physical Review A, 111(2).
Tsunaki, Lucas; Singh, Anmol; Volkova, Kseniia; Trofimov, Sergei; Pregnolato, Tommaso; Schröder, Tim & Naydenov, Boris
-
Impact of annealing and nanostructuring on properties of NV centers created by different techniques. Diamond and Related Materials, 154, 112126.
Delgado, Miriam Mendoza; Tsunaki, Lucas; Michaelson, Shaul; Kuntumalla, Mohan K.; Reithmaier, Johann P.; Hoffman, Alon; Naydenov, Boris & Popov, Cyril
-
Voltage detected single spin dynamics in diamond at ambient conditions. Nature Communications, 16(1).
Trofimov, Sergei; Lips, Klaus & Naydenov, Boris
-
Quantum Color Centers Analysis Toolbox
Boris Naydenov
