Electric and Magnetic Field Nano-Sensing Using a New, Atomic-like Qubit in a Carbon Nanotube

Ilya Khivrich, Shahal Ilani

Published 2019-08-22Version 1

Quantum sensing techniques have been successful in pushing the sensitivity limits in numerous fields, and hold great promise for scanning probes that study nano-scale devices and novel materials. However, forming a nano-scale qubit that is simple and robust enough to be placed on a scanning tip, and sensitive enough to detect various physical observables, is still a great challenge. Here we demonstrate a conceptually new qubit implementation in a carbon nanotube that achieves these requirements. In contrast to the prevailing semiconducting qubits that use electronic states in double quantum dots, our qubit utilizes the natural electronic wavefunctions in a single quantum dot. Using an ultraclean nanotube we construct a qubit from two wavefunctions with significantly different magnetic moments and spatial charge distributions, making it sensitive to both magnetic and electric fields. We use an array of gates to directly image these wavefunctions and demonstrate their localized moments. Owing to their different spatial structure, these wavefunctions also show radically different transport properties, giving us a simple transport-based qubit readout mechanism. Due to its narrow coherence-limited transition, the qubit demonstrates significantly better electric field detection sensitivity than a single electron transistor. Moreover, with the same qubit we demonstrate simultaneous probing of magnetic fields with DC sensitivity comparable to that of NV centers. Our technique has minimal requirements for device complexity, which can be implemented using a number of straightforward fabrication methods. These features make this atomic-like qubit a powerful new tool that enables a variety of new nanoscale imaging experiments.