Phenicie Christopher M, Stevenson Paul, Welinski Sacha, Rose Brendon C, Asfaw Abraham T, Cava Robert J, Lyon Stephen A, de Leon Nathalie P, Thompson Jeff D
Nano Lett. 2019 Dec 11;19(12):8928-8933. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.9b03831. Epub 2019 Dec 2.
Atomic and atomlike defects in the solid state are widely explored for quantum computers, networks, and sensors. Rare earth ions are an attractive class of atomic defects that feature narrow spin and optical transitions that are isolated from the host crystal, allowing incorporation into a wide range of materials. However, the realization of long electronic spin coherence times is hampered by magnetic noise from abundant nuclear spins in the most widely studied host crystals. Here, we demonstrate that Er ions can be introduced via ion implantation into TiO, a host crystal that has not been studied extensively for rare earth ions and has a low natural abundance of nuclear spins. We observe efficient incorporation of the implanted Er into the Ti site (>50% yield) and measure narrow inhomogeneous spin and optical line widths (20 and 460 MHz, respectively) that are comparable to bulk-doped crystalline hosts for Er. This work demonstrates that ion implantation is a viable path to studying rare earth ions in new hosts and is a significant step toward realizing individually addressed rare earth ions with long spin coherence times for quantum technologies.
固态中的原子和类原子缺陷在量子计算机、网络和传感器领域得到了广泛研究。稀土离子是一类具有吸引力的原子缺陷，其自旋和光学跃迁窄，且与主体晶体隔离，能够掺入多种材料中。然而，在最广泛研究的主体晶体中，大量核自旋产生的磁噪声阻碍了长电子自旋相干时间的实现。在此，我们证明可以通过离子注入将铒离子引入TiO中，TiO是一种尚未针对稀土离子进行广泛研究且核自旋天然丰度较低的主体晶体。我们观察到注入的铒有效地掺入了钛位点（产率>50%），并测量到窄的非均匀自旋和光学线宽（分别为20和460 MHz），这与铒的体掺杂晶体主体相当。这项工作表明，离子注入是在新主体中研究稀土离子的可行途径，也是朝着为量子技术实现具有长自旋相干时间的单个寻址稀土离子迈出的重要一步。
