Long-lived single electron spins are crucial for quantum computation and for understanding spin dynamics. A remarkably long lifetime — of the order of minutes — has now been obtained for a solid-state system. See Letter p.242

Anyone who has had a pleasant dinner at a favourite restaurant ruined by noisy neighbours understands the disruption caused by too much interaction with one's environment. Most electronic spins in a solid are also buffeted by myriad naturally occurring 'noises', including nearby fluctuating electronic motion (spin–orbit interactions), interactions with other electronic or nuclear spins, and the mechanical motion of ions. The resilience of single-spin dynamics to these environmental effects is quantified by the spin coherence time or the closely related zero-field spin lifetime. Just as one might make modifications to soundproof a restaurant to improve the ambience for diners, so reducing the noises influencing a single spin by lowering the temperature, eliminating nuclear spins, and choosing solids made up of light atoms that have weak spin–orbit interactions, leads to long spin coherence times. Unfortunately, these methods also limit the materials in which long spin coherence times can be observed. But a deaf diner is impervious to noisy neighbours, and on page 242 of this issue, Miyamachi et al.1 demonstrate an approach to making a single spin deaf to the dominant noises around it.

The system studied by Miyamachi and colleagues is a single holmium (Ho) atom adsorbed on the surface of platinum (Pt). The Ho atom has an electronic spin of 8, and its lowest-energy spin states correspond to the spin pointing towards the surface or away from the surface; these two spin states are degenerate (of equal energy). A dominant source of noise for the electronic spin of an atom adsorbed on the surface of a metal comes from a passing conduction electronic spin, which interacts with the adsorbed spin and changes its orientation, transferring one quantum of angular momentum. When this occurs, the spin orientation of the adsorbed spin also changes, so the rate of this process can limit the coherence time of the adsorbed spin.

Lengthening the spin lifetime by reducing the interaction with the environment has been demonstrated for single spins on metals, by building an insulating barrier between the adsorbed spin and the metal underneath2. In Miyamachi and colleagues' experiment, the Ho atom is adsorbed directly on a Pt surface (technically known as the (111) surface) chosen so that all the Pt surface atoms are arranged in regular, repeating equilateral triangles. The Ho atom sits in the centre of one of those triangles, and from its vantage point the surface would look the same if the entire surface were rotated 120° around it. Ordinarily, the presence of these neighbouring Pt atoms, combined with the spin–orbit interaction, would push the adsorbed spin into a quantum-mechanical state that is a superposition of the two low-energy (up and down) states, corresponding to a non-degenerate ground state for the Ho atom's electronic spin that has a vanishingly small spin orientation, and thus a short spin lifetime.

Here, however, it is this three-fold symmetry (so called because three rotations of 120° bring the surface back to its original configuration) that deafens the spin to its surroundings. The authors showed that for this geometric position of the Ho atom, and for the Ho atom's spin of 8, a transition from the Ho atom spin pointing away from the surface to it pointing towards the surface is not caused by the presence of the neighbouring atoms, and also cannot directly occur through an interaction with a passing electron's spin — the Ho atom spin is oblivious to those interactions.

The transition remains possible with two spin-flips with passing electrons, but this requires the Ho spin to be in an intermediate orientation between the two spin-flips, and being in such an orientation costs a lot of energy. For Ho on Pt(111), the most important intermediate orientation is about 8 millielectronvolts (or, equivalently, 100 kelvin) above the ground state (Fig. 1). Thus, if the temperature is much less than 100 K, the two-spin-flip transition is extremely unlikely. As a result, at a temperature of 1.1 K, Miyamachi and colleagues measured a spin lifetime that exceeded 6 minutes — a remarkably long value for any solid-state spin system. Figure 1: Energy-level structure of spin systems. The energy splitting between the two degenerate (equal energy) spin states and a third spin state for a holmium (Ho) atom on a platinum (Pt) surface is three orders of magnitude larger than for a nitrogen vacancy (NV−) centre in diamond. Furthermore, the two degenerate states are the ground states of the system, whereas the ground state of the NV− centre is a single state. This energy-level structure and large energy splitting for Ho on Pt was shown by Miyamachi et al.1, for temperatures corresponding to energies much less than the splitting, to eliminate spin processes that would reduce the lifetime of the electronic spin of the Ho atom. Full size image

How does the lifetime of the Ho electronic spin compare with that of single spins in semiconductors? Can a similar energy-level structure be obtained, with the spin-flip of a passing electron unable to cause a transition between the two degenerate lowest-energy states? This configuration occurs for a manganese atom doped into gallium arsenide. In the bulk of gallium arsenide, a manganese atom has a three-fold (angular momentum 1) degenerate ground state, but the application of an electric field3 or a strain field4 can push one state much higher in energy, producing a spin-state level structure that should have long coherence times. Spin coherence times for manganese in gallium arsenide, however, do not exceed 10 nanoseconds5 because of interactions with nuclear spins.

Another interesting comparison is with an electronic spin system called the nitrogen vacancy (NV−) centre in diamond6, in which a nitrogen atom and a vacancy replace two neighbouring carbons. That spin centre also has three-fold symmetry, and has two degenerate states. Therefore, the fundamental energy-level structure looks similar to that of Ho on Pt(111). The degenerate states of the NV− centre, however, are not ground states; the ground state is a single state and is split in energy from the other two states by only 5.6 microelectronvolts (Fig. 1).Thus, to keep long spin coherence times (a few milliseconds at room temperature7,8), the spin–orbit interaction must be very small.

Miyamachi and colleagues' exceptionally long lifetimes for single spins adsorbed on a metal strongly support the view that new single-spin candidates with improved fundamental properties can still be found, by careful consideration of the geometry and symmetry of the single spin within its environment. For a long-lived single spin, the effective coherence time can also be dramatically enhanced by careful selection and application of pulses of radiation9. To take full advantage of the long spin lifetimes of Ho on Pt(111) for spin-based computation or temporary information storage, high-speed manipulation techniques must be developed for controlling the single-spin dynamics, such as have been demonstrated for single spins in diamond10.

References 1 Miyamachi, T. et al. Nature 503, 242–246 (2013). 2 Heinrich, A. J., Gupta, J. A., Lutz, C. P. & Eigler, D. M. Science 306, 466–469 (2004). 3 Tang, J.-M., Levy, J. & Flatté, M. E. Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 106803 (2006). 4 Yakunin, A. M. et al. Nature Mater. 6, 512–515 (2007). 5 Myers, R. C. et al. Nature Mater. 7, 203–208 (2008). 6 Jelezko, F., Gaebel, T., Popa, I., Gruber, A. & Wrachtrup, J. Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 076401 (2004). 7 Bar-Gill, N., Pham, L. M., Jarmola, A., Budker, D. & Walsworth, R. L. Nature Commun. 4, 1743 (2013). 8 Balasubramanian, G. et al. Nature Mater. 8, 383–387 (2009). 9 Dobrovitski, V. V., Fuchs, G. D., Falk, A. L., Santori, C. & Awschalom, D. D. Annu. Rev. Condens. Matter Phys. 4, 23–50 (2013). 10 Fuchs, G. D., Dobrovitski, V. V., Toyli, D. M., Heremans, F. J. & Awschalom, D. D. Science 326, 1520–1522 (2009). Download references

Author information Affiliations Michael E. Flatté is in the Optical Science and Technology Center and the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa 52242, USA. Michael E. Flatté Authors Michael E. Flatté View author publications You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar Corresponding author Correspondence to Michael E. Flatté.

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About this article Cite this article Flatté, M. The right ambience for a single spin. Nature 503, 205–206 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/503205a Download citation Published: 13 November 2013

Issue Date: 14 November 2013

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/503205a