Controllable effects of quantum fluctuations on spin free-induction decay at room temperature

Fluctuations of local fields cause decoherence of quantum objects. Usually at high temperatures, thermal noises are much stronger than quantum fluctuations unless the thermal effects are suppressed by certain techniques such as spin echo. Here we report the discovery of strong quantum-fluctuation ef...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inScientific reports Vol. 2; no. 1; p. 432
Main Authors Liu, Gang-Qin, Pan, Xin-Yu, Jiang, Zhan-Feng, Zhao, Nan, Liu, Ren-Bao
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London Nature Publishing Group UK 30.05.2012
Nature Publishing Group
Subjects
639/301/119/997
639/766/119
639/766/483
639/766/530
Algorithms
Baths
Carbon Isotopes - chemistry
Chemical Phenomena
Competition
Diamond - chemistry
Electrons
Expanding universe theory
Humanities and Social Sciences
Magnetic Fields
Mathematical models
Models, Chemical
multidisciplinary
Nitrogen - chemistry
Particle Size
Quantum Dots
Quantum Theory
Science
Temperature
Temperature effects
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Summary:Fluctuations of local fields cause decoherence of quantum objects. Usually at high temperatures, thermal noises are much stronger than quantum fluctuations unless the thermal effects are suppressed by certain techniques such as spin echo. Here we report the discovery of strong quantum-fluctuation effects of nuclear spin baths on free-induction decay of single electron spins in solids at room temperature. We find that the competition between the quantum and thermal fluctuations is controllable by an external magnetic field. These findings are based on Ramsey interference measurement of single nitrogen-vacancy center spins in diamond and numerical simulation of the decoherence, which are in excellent agreement.
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/srep00432