English

Second-Scale Nuclear Spin Coherence Time of Trapped Ultracold $^{23}$Na$^{40}$K Molecules

Quantum Gases 2017-08-07 v1 Atomic Physics Chemical Physics Quantum Physics

Abstract

Coherence, the stability of the relative phase between quantum states, lies at the heart of quantum mechanics. Applications such as precision measurement, interferometry, and quantum computation are enabled by physical systems that have quantum states with robust coherence. With the creation of molecular ensembles at sub-μ\muK temperatures, diatomic molecules have become a novel system under full quantum control. Here, we report on the observation of stable coherence between a pair of nuclear spin states of ultracold fermionic NaK molecules in the singlet rovibrational ground state. Employing microwave fields, we perform Ramsey spectroscopy and observe coherence times on the scale of one second. This work opens the door for the exploration of single molecules as a versatile quantum memory. Switchable long-range interactions between dipolar molecules can further enable two-qubit gates, allowing quantum storage and processing in the same physical system. Within the observed coherence time, 10410^4 one- and two-qubit gate operations will be feasible.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1606.04184,
  title  = {Second-Scale Nuclear Spin Coherence Time of Trapped Ultracold $^{23}$Na$^{40}$K Molecules},
  author = {Jee Woo Park and Zoe Z. Yan and Huanqian Loh and Sebastian A. Will and Martin W. Zwierlein},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1606.04184},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

8 pages, 5 figures