Controlling a nuclear spin in a nanodiamond

Abstract

The sensing capability of a single optically bright electronic spin in diamond can be enhanced by making use of proximal dark nuclei as ancillary spins. Such systems, so far only realized in bulk diamond, provide orders of magnitude higher sensitivity and spectral resolution in the case of magnetic sensing, as well as improved readout fidelity and state storage time in quantum information schemes. In nanodiamonds, which offer additional opportunities as mobile nanoscale sensors, electronic-nuclear spin complexes have remained inaccessible. We demonstrate coherent control of a 13C nuclear spin located 4{\AA} from a nitrogen-vacancy center in a nanodiamond and show quantum-state transfer between the two components of this hybrid spin system. We extract a nuclear-spin free precession time of T2* = 26 us, which exceeds the bare electron free precession time in nanodiamond by two orders of magnitude.