Coherent properties of single rare-earth spin qubits - Nature Communications

Rare-earth-doped crystals are excellent hardware for quantum storage of photons. Additional functionality of these materials is added by their waveguiding properties allowing for on-chip photonic networks. However, detection and coherent properties of rare-earth single-spin qubits have not been demonstrated so far. Here we present experimental results on high-fidelity optical initialization, effcient coherent manipulation and optical readout of a single-electron spin of Ce3+ ion in a yttrium aluminium garnet crystal. Under dynamic decoupling, spin coherence lifetime reaches T2=2 ms and is almost limited by the measured spin-lattice relaxation time T1=4.5 ms. Strong hyperfine coupling to aluminium nuclear spins suggests that cerium electron spins can be exploited as an interface between photons and long-lived nuclear spin memory. Combined with high brightness of Ce3+ emission and a possibility of creating photonic circuits out of the host material, this makes cerium spins an interesting option for integrated quantum photonics. Rare-earth-doped crystals are prime candidates for qubit storage that could be easily interfaced with photonic systems. Towards this end, Siyushev et al.show the initialization, coherent manipulation and readout of single-electron spins on cerium ions embedded in YAG crystals.