58. Nanoscale engineering and dynamical stabilization of mesoscopic spin textures
K. Harkins†, C. Fleckenstein†, N. D'Souza†, P. M. Schindler†, D. Marchiori†, C. Artiaco, Q. Reynard-Feytis, U. Basumallick, W. Beatrez, A. Pillai, M. Hagn, A. Nayak, S. Breuer, X. Lv, M. McAllister, P. Reshetikhin, E. Druga, M. Bukov, A. Ajoy [PDF][SI]
arXiv:2310.05635 — Science Advances 11, 13, eadn9021 (2025)
Spotlighted by Berkeley CoC News: Holding heat in place: stabilizing spin textures in quantum materials.
Video showing the State Engineering of spin textures by hyperpolarization injection
Video showing the "melting" of state engineered texture due to spin diffusion
Video showing the formation of stabilized, long-lived, spin texture by Hamiltonian Engineering
Abstract:
Thermalization, while ubiquitous in physics, has traditionally been viewed as an obstacle to be mitigated. In contrast, we demonstrate here the use of thermalization in the generation, control, and readout of “shell-like” spin textures with interacting 13C nuclear spins in diamond, wherein spins are polarized oppositely on either side of a critical radius. The textures span several nanometers and encompass many hundred spins; they are created and interrogated without manipulating the nuclear spins individually. Long-time stabilization is achieved via prethermalization to a Floquet-engineered Hamiltonian under the electronic gradient field: The texture is therefore metastable and robust against spin diffusion. This enables the state to endure over multiple minutes before it decays. Our work on spin-state engineering paves the way for applications in quantum simulation and nanoscale imaging.
