Coherently driving a single nuclear spin through the resonance of a nanomechanical oscillator

The discovery of nuclear electric resonance in a single ¹²³Sb nucleus in silicon [1] was accompanied by a detailed, quantitative understanding of the coupling between the nuclear quadrupole moment and lattice strain. With this knowledge, it is possible to design an experiment where the nuclear spin is coherently controlled using resonant acoustic drive, i.e. nuclear acoustic resonance (NAR) [2]. In this work we present a more advanced spin-mechanical device where the dynamical strain induced at the clamping point of a resonating nanoscale cantilever is used to drive single-nucleus NAR, and illustrate a method of electrically detecting the resonant frequency of the nanocantilever. Taken to the extreme, this design could be adapted to demonstrate the strong coupling between a single nuclear spin and a single phonon in a mechanical resonator, with exciting ramifications in foundational experiments on quantum mechanics.



[1] S. Asaad et al., Nature 579, 205 (2020)

[2] L. A. O’Neill et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 119, 174001 (2021)