Coupling a single NV center to a superconducting flux qubit via a nanomechanical resonator

Abstract

We investigate the hybrid quantum system of a superconducting flux qubit, a single electronic spin associated with a negatively charged nitrogen vacancy (NV) center in diamond, and a high-quality magnetized nanomechanical resonator (NAMR). It is shown that the quantized motion of the NAMR can strongly couple to both the NV spin and the flux qubit. We estimate that the coupling strength of the NAMR to both the NV spin and the flux qubit can be about 2 π × 100 kHz, which is one order of magnitude larger than direct spin–qubit coupling. This enables the quantum state transfer to be faster and more robust against decoherence. The present work may provide an appealing way for quantum information processing based on hybrid solid-state quantum systems.