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Quantum memories capable of storing and retrieving coherent information for extended times at room temperature would enable a host of new technologies. Electron and nuclear spin qubits using shallow neutral donors in semiconductors have been studied extensively but are limited to low temperatures (<̰10 kelvin); however, the nuclear spins of ionized donors have the potential for high-temperature operation. We used optical methods and dynamical decoupling to realize this potential for an ensemble of phosphorous-31 donors in isotopically purified silicon-28 and observed a room-temperature coherence time of over 39 minutes. We further showed that a coherent spin superposition can be cycled from 4.2 kelvin to room temperature and back, and we report a cryogenic coherence time of 3 hours in the same system.

Physical systems reach thermal equilibrium through energy exchange with their environment, and for spins in solids the relevant environment is almost always their host lattice. However, recent studies 1 motivated by observations by Purcell 2 have shown how radiative emission into a microwave cavity can become the dominant relaxation path for spins if the spin–cavity coupling is sufficiently large (such as for small-mode-volume cavities). In this regime, the cavity electromagnetic field overrides the lattice as the dominant environment, inviting the prospect of controlling the spin temperature independently from that of the lattice, by engineering a suitable cavity field. Here, we report on precisely such control over spin temperature, illustrating a novel and universal method to increase the electron spin polarization above its thermal equilibrium value (termed hyperpolarization). By switching the cavity input between resistive loads at different temperatures we can control the electron spin polarization, cooling it below the lattice temperature. Our demonstration uses donor spins in silicon coupled to a superconducting microresonator and we observe more than a twofold increase in spin polarization. This approach provides a general route to signal enhancement in electron spin resonance, or nuclear magnetic resonance through dynamical nuclear spin polarization 3 , 4 . Electron spins in solid usually relax their energy through the coupling with phonons in the host lattice. By using the coupling to microwave photons in a cavity as an alternative relaxation path, it is demonstrated that spins can be cooled below the lattice temperature.

Understanding the microscopic origins of electronic phases in high-transition temperature (high-Tc) superconductors is important for elucidating the mechanism of superconductivity. In the paramagnetic tetragonal phase of BaFe2–xTxAs2 (where T is Co or Ni) iron pnictides, an in-plane resistivity anisotropy has been observed. Here, we use inelastic neutron scattering to show that low-energy spin excitations in these materials change from fourfold symmetric to twofold symmetric at temperatures corresponding to the onset of the in-plane resistivity anisotropy. Because resistivity and spin excitation anisotropies both vanish near optimal superconductivity, we conclude that they are likely intimately connected.

Measurement of the nuclear polarization in GaAs/AlGaAs quantum dots through manipulation of the nuclear spin states with radiofrequency pulses reveals polarizations up to 80%. Deep cooling of electron and nuclear spins is equivalent to achieving polarization degrees close to 100% and is a key requirement in solid-state quantum information technologies 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 . While polarization of individual nuclear spins in diamond 2 and SiC (ref.  3 ) reaches 99% and beyond, it has been limited to 50–65% for the nuclei in quantum dots 8 , 9 , 10 . Theoretical models have attributed this limit to formation of coherent ‘dark’ nuclear spin states 11 , 12 , 13 but experimental verification is lacking, especially due to the poor accuracy of polarization degree measurements. Here we measure the nuclear polarization in GaAs/AlGaAs quantum dots with high accuracy using a new approach enabled by manipulation of the nuclear spin states with radiofrequency pulses. Polarizations up to 80% are observed—the highest reported so far for optical cooling in quantum dots. This value is still not limited by nuclear coherence effects. Instead we find that optically cooled nuclei are well described within a classical spin temperature framework 14 . Our findings unlock a route for further progress towards quantum dot electron spin qubits where deep cooling of the mesoscopic nuclear spin ensemble is used to achieve long qubit coherence 4 , 5 . Moreover, GaAs hyperfine material constants are measured here experimentally for the first time.

Optical quantum networks can connect distant quantum processors to enable secure quantum communication and distributed quantum computing. Superconducting qubits are a leading technology for quantum information processing but cannot couple to long-distance optical networks without an efficient, coherent, and low noise interface between microwave and optical photons. Here, we demonstrate a microwave-to-optical transducer using an ensemble of erbium ions that is simultaneously coupled to a superconducting microwave resonator and a nanophotonic optical resonator. The coherent atomic transitions of the ions mediate the frequency conversion from microwave photons to optical photons and using photon counting we observed device conversion efficiency approaching 10 −7 . With pulsed operation at a low duty cycle, the device maintained a spin temperature below 100 mK and microwave resonator heating of less than 0.15 quanta. Interfacing superconducting quantum information processors with long-distance optical networks would require coherent interfacing between microwave and optical photons. Here, the authors show a chip-integrated microwave-to-optical transducer based on rare earth ion ensembles.

Glass transition, in which viscosity of liquids increases dramatically upon decrease of temperature without any major change in structural properties, remains one of the most challenging problems in condensed matter physics despite tremendous research efforts in past decades. On the other hand, disordered freezing of spins in magnetic materials with decreasing temperature, the so-called “spin glass transition,” is understood relatively better. A previously found similarity between some spin glass models and the structural glasses inspired development of theories of structural glasses based on the scenario of spin glass transition. This scenario, although it looks very appealing, is still far from being well established. One of the main differences between standard spin systems and molecular systems is the absence of quenched disorder and the presence of translational invariance: it often is assumed that this difference is not relevant, but this conjecture still needs to be established. The quantities, which are well-defined and characterized for spin models, are not easily calculable for molecular glasses because of the lack of quenched disorder that breaks the translational invariance in the system. Thus the characterization of the similarity between spin and the structural glass transition remains an elusive subject. In this study, we introduced a model structural glass with built-in quenched disorder that alleviates this main difference between the spin and molecular glasses, thereby helping us compare these two systems: the possibility of producing a good thermalization at rather low temperatures is one of the advantages of this model.

Measurements of the spin heat accumulation at the ferromagnetic/non-magnetic interface in nanopillar spin valves show that spin-up and spin-down electrons have different temperatures. This observation is important for the design of magnetic thermal switches and the study of inelastic spin scattering. Since the discovery of the giant magnetoresistance effect 1 , 2 the intrinsic angular momentum of the electron has opened up new spin-based device concepts. Our present understanding of the coupled transport of charge, spin and heat relies on the two-channel model for spin-up and spin-down electrons having equal temperatures. Here we report the observation of different (effective) temperatures for the spin-up and spin-down electrons in a nanopillar spin valve subject to a heat current. By three-dimensional finite element modelling 3 of our devices for varying thickness of the non-magnetic layer, spin heat accumulations (the difference of the spin temperatures) of 120 mK and 350 mK are extracted at room temperature and 77 K, respectively, which is of the order of 10% of the total temperature bias over the nanopillar. This technique uniquely allows the study of inelastic spin scattering at low energies and elevated temperatures, which is not possible by spectroscopic methods.

Mineral properties in Earth's lower mantle are affected by iron electronic states, but representative pressures and temperatures have not yet been probed. Spin states of iron in lower-mantle ferropericlase have been measured up to 95 gigapascals and 2000 kelvin with x-ray emission in a laser-heated diamond cell. A gradual spin transition of iron occurs over a pressure-temperature range extending from about 1000 kilometers in depth and 1900 kelvin to 2200 kilometers and 2300 kelvin in the lower mantle. Because low-spin ferropericlase exhibits higher density and faster sound velocities relative to the high-spin ferropericlase, the observed increase in low-spin (Mg,Fe)O at mid-lower mantle conditions would manifest seismically as a lower-mantle spin transition zone characterized by a steeper-than-normal density gradient.

The rate of nuclear spin-lattice relaxation is determined by the efficiency of interaction between thermal phonons and nuclear spins. The results on reducing the efficiency of spin–phonon coupling by suppressing the contribution from paramagnetic centers to quadrupole nucleus relaxation are presented. The suppression has been performed by continuous magnetic action at the Larmor frequency. It is shown that, as in the presence of an acoustic field, the rate of spin-lattice relaxation of 23 Na nuclei in a sodium fluoride crystal at magnetic saturation of the NMR signal does not change in the region of a negative average spin temperature. In the region of positive spin temperature, the rate of relaxation of 23 Na spins significantly decreases and nuclear magnetization recovery with time is described by the sum of two exponentials. The contribution from nuclear spins with a lower efficiency of spin–phonon coupling, corresponding to the exponential with a long relaxation time, increases with increasing saturating field intensity. It is demonstrated that the efficiency of spin–phonon coupling for 19 F nuclei, which do not have the quadrupole moment, does not change under the saturation conditions. The results obtained can be used for analyzing the structure of real crystals.

We propose a method of cooling nuclear spin systems of solid-state nanostructures by applying a time-dependent magnetic field synchronized with spin fluctuations. Optical spin noise spectroscopy is considered a method of fluctuation control. Depending on the mutual orientation of the oscillating magnetic field and the probe light beam, cooling might be either provided by dynamic spin polarization in an external static field or result from population transfer between spin levels without build-up of a net magnetic moment (“true cooling”).