Nuclear spins in solid-state platforms are promising for building rotation sensors due to their long coherence times. Among these platforms, nitrogen-vacancy ($\mathrm{N}$-$V$) centers have attracted considerable attention with ambient operating conditions. However, the current performance of $\mathrm{N}$-$V$ gyroscopes remains limited by the degraded coherence when they are operating with large spin ensembles. Protecting the coherence of these systems requires a systematic study of the coherence-decay mechanism. Here we present the use of nitrogen-15 nuclear spins of $\mathrm{N}$-$V$ centers in building gyroscopes and compare their performance to the better studied nitroge-14 nuclear spins: while nitrogen-15 spins benefit from their simpler energy structure and lack of a quadrupolar interaction, they suffer from other challenges in coherence protection. We systematically reveal the coherence-decay mechanism of the nuclear spin in different $\mathrm{N}$-$V$ electronic spin manifolds and further develop a robust coherence-protection protocol based on controlling the $\mathrm{N}$-$V$ electronic spin only, achieving a 15-fold increase in dephasing time. With the coherence protection developed, we demonstrate an emulated gyroscope by measuring a designed rotation-rate pattern, showing an order-of-magnitude sensitivity improvement.
Nuclear spins in solid-state platforms are promising for building rotation sensors due to their long coherence times. Among these platforms, nitrogen-vacancy centers have attracted considerable attention with ambient operating conditions. However, the current performance of NV gyroscopes remains limited by the degraded coherence when operating with large spin ensembles. Protecting the coherence of these systems requires a systematic study of the coherence decay mechanism. Here we present the use of nitrogen-15 nuclear spins of NV centers in building gyroscopes, benefiting from its simpler energy structure and vanishing nuclear quadrupole term compared with nitrogen-14 nuclear spins, though suffering from different challenges in coherence protection. We systematically reveal the coherence decay mechanism of the nuclear spin in different NV electronic spin manifolds and further develop a robust coherence protection protocol based on controlling the NV electronic spin only, achieving a 15-fold dephasing time improvement. With the developed coherence protection, we demonstrate an emulated gyroscope by measuring a designed rotation rate pattern, showing an order-of-magnitude sensitivity improvement.
Solid-state platforms based on electro-nuclear spin systems are attractive candidates for rotation sensing due to their excellent sensitivity, stability, and compact size, compatible with industrial applications. Conventional spin-based gyroscopes measure the accumulated phase of a nuclear spin superposition state to extract the rotation rate and thus suffer from spin dephasing. Here, we propose a gyroscope protocol based on a two-spin system that includes a spin intrinsically tied to the host material, while the other spin is isolated. The rotation rate is then extracted by measuring the relative rotation angle between the two spins starting from their population states, robust against spin dephasing. In particular, the relative rotation rate between the two spins can be enhanced by their hyperfine coupling by more than an order of magnitude, further boosting the achievable sensitivity. The ultimate sensitivity of the gyroscope is limited by the lifetime of the spin system and compatible with a broad dynamic range, even in the presence of magnetic noises or control errors due to initialization and qubit manipulations. Our result enables precise measurement of slow rotations and exploration of fundamental physics.
Programmable quantum systems based on Rydberg atom arrays have recently been used for hardware-efficient tests of quantum optimization algorithms [Ebadi et al., Science, 376, 1209 (2022)] with hundreds of qubits. In particular, the maximum independent set problem on so-called unit-disk graphs, was shown to be efficiently encodable in such a quantum system. Here, we extend the classes of problems that can be efficiently encoded in Rydberg arrays by constructing explicit mappings from a wide class of problems to maximum-weighted independent set problems on unit-disk graphs, with at most a quadratic overhead in the number of qubits. We analyze several examples, including maximum-weighted independent set on graphs with arbitrary connectivity, quadratic unconstrained binary optimization problems with arbitrary or restricted connectivity, and integer factorization. Numerical simulations on small system sizes indicate that the adiabatic time scale for solving the mapped problems is strongly correlated with that of the original problems. Our work provides a blueprint for using Rydberg atom arrays to solve a wide range of combinatorial optimization problems with arbitrary connectivity, beyond the restrictions imposed by the hardware geometry.5 MoreReceived 14 September 2022Revised 14 December 2022Accepted 4 January 2023DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PRXQuantum.4.010316Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.Published by the American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasBoolean satisfiability problemNP-hard problemsQuantum information architectures & platformsQuantum softwarePhysical SystemsAtomsRydberg atoms & moleculesQuantum InformationAtomic, Molecular & OpticalStatistical Physics
Solid-state platforms based on electronuclear spin systems are attractive candidates for rotation sensing due to their excellent sensitivity, stability, and compact size, compatible with industrial applications. Conventional spin-based gyroscopes measure the accumulated phase of a nuclear spin superposition state to extract the rotation rate and thus suffer from spin dephasing. Here, we propose a gyroscope protocol based on a two-spin system that includes a spin intrinsically tied to the host material, while the other spin is isolated. The rotation rate is then extracted by measuring the relative rotation angle between the two spins starting from their population states, robust against spin dephasing. In particular, the relative rotation rate between the two spins can be enhanced by their hyperfine coupling by more than an order of magnitude, further boosting the achievable sensitivity. The ultimate sensitivity of the gyroscope is limited by the lifetime of the spin system and compatible with a broad dynamic range, even in the presence of magnetic noise or control errors due to initialization and qubit manipulations. Our result enables precise measurement of slow rotations and exploration of fundamental physics.
Programmable quantum systems based on Rydberg atom arrays have recently been used for hardware-efficient tests of quantum optimization algorithms [Ebadi et al., Science, 376, 1209 (2022)] with hundreds of qubits. In particular, the maximum independent set problem on so-called unit-disk graphs, was shown to be efficiently encodable in such a quantum system. Here, we extend the classes of problems that can be efficiently encoded in Rydberg arrays by constructing explicit mappings from a wide class of problems to maximum weighted independent set problems on unit-disk graphs, with at most a quadratic overhead in the number of qubits. We analyze several examples, including: maximum weighted independent set on graphs with arbitrary connectivity, quadratic unconstrained binary optimization problems with arbitrary or restricted connectivity, and integer factorization. Numerical simulations on small system sizes indicate that the adiabatic time scale for solving the mapped problems is strongly correlated with that of the original problems. Our work provides a blueprint for using Rydberg atom arrays to solve a wide range of combinatorial optimization problems with arbitrary connectivity, beyond the restrictions imposed by the hardware geometry.