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Individual solid-state nuclear spin qubits with coherence exceeding seconds

Abstract

The ability to coherently control and read out qubits is a crucial requirement for any quantum processor. Individual nuclear spins in solid-state systems have been used as long-lived qubits with control and readout performed using individual electron spin ancilla qubits that can be addressed either electrically or optically. Here we present a platform for quantum information processing, consisting of 183W nuclear spin qubits adjacent to an Er3+ impurity in a CaWO4 crystal coupled to a superconducting resonator. We study two nuclear spin qubits with \({T}_{2}^{* }\) of 0.8(2) s and 1.2(3) s, and T2 of 3.4(4) s and 4.4(6) s, respectively. The nuclear spin state influences the number of photons emitted after repeated excitation of the Er3+ electron ancilla spin qubit, enabling quantum non-demolition readout using a single microwave photon detector. Using stimulated Raman driving on the coupled electron–nuclear-spin system, we implement all-microwave one- and two-qubit gates on a timescale of a few milliseconds, and prepare a decoherence-protected Bell state. Our results position this platform as a potential route towards quantum processing using nuclear spins.

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Fig. 1: Experiment schematics and nuclear spin readout and preparation.
Fig. 2: Nuclear spin qubit spectroscopy and Rabi oscillations by means of stimulated Raman driving.
Fig. 3: Coherence of nuclear spin qubits.
Fig. 4: Entanglement of two nuclear spins.

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Data availability

The data supporting the findings of this article are available via Figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.29635709 (ref. 45). Additional data are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

Code availability

The code used to perform the experiments and analyse the data in this work are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge technical support from P. Sénat, D. Duet, P.-F. Orfila and S. Delprat, and are grateful for fruitful discussions within the Quantronics group. We acknowledge support from the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) through the MIRESPIN (ANR-19-CE47-0011) project. We acknowledge support of the Région Ile-de-France through the DIM QUANTIP, from the AIDAS virtual joint laboratory and from the France 2030 plan under the ROBUSTSUPERQ (ANR-22-PETQ-0003) grant. This project has received funding from the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the project OpenSuperQ100+, under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 945298-ParisRegionFP and from the European Research Council under grant no. 101042315 (INGENIOUS). We thank the support of the CNRS research infrastructure INFRANALYTICS (FR 2054) and Initiative d’Excellence d’Aix-Marseille Université – A*MIDEX (AMX-22-RE-AB-199). We acknowledge IARPA and Lincoln Labs for providing the Josephson Traveling-Wave Parametric Amplifier. We acknowledge the crystal lattice visualization tool VESTA. E.F. acknowledges support from the PEPR NISQ2LSQ Project (ANR-22- PETQ-0006). S. L. and R.B.L were supported by the Innovation Programme for Quantum Science and Technology project no. 2023ZD0300600, the National Natural Science Foundation of China/Hong Kong Research Council Collaborative Research Scheme project CRS-CUHK401/22, the Hong Kong Research Grants Council Senior Research Fellow Scheme project SRFS2223-4S01 and the New Cornerstone Science Foundation.

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Contributions

The experiment was designed by J.T., J.O’S., E.F. and P.B. The crystal was grown by P.G. and characterized by EPR spectroscopy by S.B. The spin resonator chip was designed and fabricated by J.T. with the help of P.A. The SMPD was designed, fabricated and characterized by L.P. under supervision of E.F. Data were acquired by J.O’S. and J.T. with the help of Z.W.H. and P.H. Data analysis and simulations were conducted by J.T., J.O’S., Z.W.H. and P.H. The manuscript was written by J.O’S., J.T. and P.B. with contributions from all co-authors. The project was supervised by P.B. and E.F.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to James O’Sullivan, Jaime Travesedo or Emmanuel Flurin.

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Nature Physics thanks Zong-Quan Zhou and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–9, Discussion and Table 1.

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O’Sullivan, J., Travesedo, J., Pallegoix, L. et al. Individual solid-state nuclear spin qubits with coherence exceeding seconds. Nat. Phys. 21, 1794–1800 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-025-03049-7

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