Purdue researchers develop electrically reconfigurable interactions in quantum spin systems
Researchers with Purdue University’s Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering have demonstrated a platform with electrically reconfigurable interactions between atom-like spin qubits and wave-like excitations of magnets. This could enable improved nanoscale electric field sensors and scalable quantum circuits of optically-addressable spin qubits.
Pramey Upadhyaya, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, says electric field control of spin interactions is crucial for the development of next-generation information processing and sensing technologies that leverage electron’s spin degrees of freedom.
He says this research married classical properties of spintronics with quantum mechanics to demonstrate for the first time how to control magnetism electrically. Upadhyaya says this new hybrid system integrates ferroelectric (PMN-PT) and ferromagnet (CoFeB) thin films with atom-like spin qubits [an ensemble of Nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers in nanodiamond].
“We theoretically demonstrated that this phenomena could produce electric sensors with more than an order of magnitude enhancement in DC electric field sensing when compared with present-day schemes utilizing single spins,” he says. “The next step is to demonstrate this experimentally.”
Upadhyaya says in addition to enabling a new class of electrically-tunable spin-based quantum devices, such as improved nanoscale electric field sensors and scalable on-chip hybrid quantum circuits of optically-addressable spin qubits, this research shows a possible pathway to use these sensors to advance new material discovery.