Single-Shot Readout of a Single Nuclear Spin

TLDR

Quantum information processing promises advantages over classical computing and secure communication, yet reading quantum states is destructive and probabilistic, requiring many measurements, as highlighted for nitrogen‑vacancy centers in diamond. The authors devised a single‑shot, nondestructive protocol that maps the nuclear spin state of a nitrogen‑vacancy center onto nearby electronic spins for readout. The protocol eliminates the destructive, probabilistic readout limitations, enabling nondestructive single‑shot measurement of the nuclear spin.

Abstract

Probed But Not Perturbed The processing and manipulation of quantum information holds great promise in terms of outperforming classical computers and secure communication. However, quantum information is delicate, and even reading the information is a destructive and probabilistic process requiring a number of measurements to home in on the information stored as a quantum state. For the nitrogen vacancy in diamond, Neumann et al. (p. 542 , published online 1 July) show that these limitations can be eliminated. A measurement protocol was designed and implemented where the spin state of the nuclear spin of the vacancy could be mapped onto and read out from the surrounding electronic spins in a single-shot measurement nondestructively.