Kavli Affiliate: Sander Otte
| First 5 Authors: Lukas M. Veldman, Evert W. Stolte, Mark P. Canavan, Rik Broekhoven, Philip Willke
| Summary:
The nuclear spin, being much more isolated from the environment than its
electronic counterpart, enables quantum experiments with prolonged coherence
times and presents a gateway towards uncovering the intricate dynamics within
an atom. These qualities have been demonstrated in a variety of nuclear spin
qubit architectures, albeit with limited control over the direct environment of
the nuclei. As a contrasting approach, the combination of electron spin
resonance (ESR) and scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) provides a bottom-up
platform to study the fundamental properties of nuclear spins of single atoms
on a surface. However, access to the time evolution of these nuclear spins, as
was recently demonstrated for electron spins, remained a challenge. Here, we
present an experiment resolving the nanosecond coherent dynamics of a
hyperfine-driven flip-flop interaction between the spin of an individual
nucleus and that of an orbiting electron. We use the unique local
controllability of the magnetic field emanating from the STM probe tip to bring
the electron and nuclear spins in tune, as evidenced by a set of avoided level
crossings in ESR-STM. Subsequently, we polarize both spins through scattering
of tunnelling electrons and measure the resulting free evolution of the coupled
spin system using a DC pump-probe scheme. The latter reveals a complex pattern
of multiple interfering coherent oscillations, providing unique insight into
the atom’s hyperfine physics. The ability to trace the coherent hyperfine
dynamics with atomic-scale structural control adds a new dimension to the study
of on-surface spins, offering a pathway towards dynamic quantum simulation of
low-dimensional magnonics.
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