Coupling spin ‚clock states‘ to superconducting circuits

  1. Ignacio Gimeno,
  2. David Zueco,
  3. Yan Duan,
  4. Carlos Sánchez-Azqueta,
  5. Thomas Astner,
  6. Alejandro Gaita-Ariño,
  7. Stephen Hill,
  8. Johannes Majer,
  9. Eugenio Coronado,
  10. and Fernando Luis
A central goal in quantum technologies is to maximize GT2, where G stands for the rate at which each qubit can be coherently driven and T2 is the qubit’s phase coherence time.
This is challenging, as increasing G (e.g. by coupling the qubit more strongly to external stimuli) often leads to deleterious effects on T2. Here, we study a physical situation in which both G and T2 can be simultaneously optimized. We measure the coupling to microwave superconducting coplanar waveguides of pure (i.e. non magnetically diluted) crystals of HoW10 magnetic clusters, which show level anticrossings, or spin clock transitions, at equidistant magnetic fields. The absorption lines give a complete picture of the magnetic energy level scheme and, in particular, confirm the existence of such clock transitions. The quantitative analysis of the microwave transmission allows monitoring the overlap between spin wave functions and gives information about their coupling to the environment and to the propagating photons. The formation of quantum superpositions of spin-up and spin-down states at the clock transitions allows simultaneously maximizing the spin-photon coupling and minimizing environmental spin perturbations. Using the same experimental device, we also explore the coupling of these qubits to a 11.7 GHz cavity mode, arising from a nonperfect microwave propagation at the chip boundaries and find a collective spin to single photon coupling GN = 100 MHz. The engineering of spin states in molecular systems offers a promising strategy to combine sizeable photon-mediated interactions, thus scalability, with a sufficient isolation from unwanted magnetic noise sources.

Nanometric constrictions in superconducting coplanar waveguide resonators

  1. Mark David Jenkins,
  2. Uta Naether,
  3. Miguel Ciria,
  4. Javier Sesé,
  5. James Atkinson,
  6. Carlos Sánchez-Azqueta,
  7. Enrique del Barco,
  8. Johannes Majer,
  9. David Zueco,
  10. and Fernando Luis
We report on the design, fabrication and characterization of superconducting coplanar waveguide resonators with nanometric constrictions. By reducing the size of the center line down
to 50 nm, the RF currents are concentrated into a small cross section and the magnetic field in its vicinity is increased. The device characteristics are only slightly modified by the constrictions, with changes in resonance frequency lower than 1% and changes in transmission and Q-factor lower than 20%. These devices could enable the achievement of higher couplings to small magnetic samples or even to single molecular spins and have applications in circuit quantum electrodynamics, quantum computing and electron paramagnetic resonance.