State-of-the-art methods for sensing weak AC fields are only efficient in the low frequency domain (<10 MHz). The inefficiency of sensing high-frequency signals is due to the lack of ability to use dynamical decoupling. In this paper we show that dynamical decoupling can be incorporated into high-frequency sensing schemes and by this we demonstrate that the high sensitivity achieved for low frequency can be extended to the whole spectrum. While our scheme is general and suitable to a variety of atomic and solid-state systems, we experimentally demonstrate it with the nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond. For a diamond with natural abundance of ¹³C, we achieve coherence times up to 1.43 ms resulting in a smallest detectable magnetic field strength of 4 nT at 1.6 GHz. Attributed to the inherent nature of our scheme, we observe an additional increase in coherence time due to the signal itself.

Precise timekeeping is critical to metrology, forming the basis by which standards of time, length, and fundamental constants are determined. Stable clocks are particularly valuable in spectroscopy because they define the ultimate frequency precision that can be reached. In quantum metrology, the qubit coherence time defines the clock stability, from which the spectral linewidth and frequency precision are determined. We demonstrate a quantum sensing protocol in which the spectral precision goes beyond the sensor coherence time and is limited by the stability of a classical clock. Using this technique, we observed a precision in frequency estimation scaling in time T as T^–3/2 for classical oscillating fields. The narrow linewidth magnetometer based on single spins in diamond is used to sense nanoscale magnetic fields with an intrinsic frequency resolution of 607 microhertz, which is eight orders of magnitude narrower than the qubit coherence time.

Engineering entanglement between quantum systems often involves coupling through a bosonic mediator, which should be disentangled from the systems at the operation’s end. The quality of such an operation is generally limited by environmental and control noise. One of the prime techniques for suppressing noise is by dynamical decoupling, where one actively applies pulses at a rate that is faster than the typical time scale of the noise. However, for boson-mediated gates, current dynamical decoupling schemes require executing the pulses only when the boson and the quantum systems are disentangled. This restriction implies an increase of the gate time by a factor of √N, with N being the number of pulses applied. Here we propose and realize a method that enables dynamical decoupling in a boson-mediated system where the pulses can be applied while spin-boson entanglement persists, resulting in an increase in time that is at most a factor of π/2, independently of the number of pulses applied. We experimentally demonstrate the robustness of our entangling gate with fast dynamical decoupling to σz noise using ions in a Paul trap.

The experimental realization of many-body entangled states is one of the main goals of quantum technology as these states are a key resource for quantum computation and quantum sensing. However, increasing the number of photons in an entangled state has been proved to be a painstakingly hard task. This is a result of the nondeterministic emission of current photon sources and the distinguishability between photons from different sources. Moreover, the generation rate and the complexity of the optical setups hinder scalability. Here we present a scheme that is compact, requires a very modest number of components, and avoids the distinguishability issues by using only one single-photon source. States of any number of photons are generated with the same configuration, with no need for increasing the optical setup. The basic operation of this scheme is experimentally demonstrated, and its sensitivity to imperfections is considered.

Dynamical decoupling techniques are the method of choice for increasing gate fidelities. While these methods have produced very impressive results in terms of decreasing local noise and increasing the fidelities of single-qubit operations, dealing with the noise of two-qubit gates has proven more challenging. The main obstacle is that the noise time scale is shorter than the two-qubit gate itself, so that refocusing methods do not work. We present a measurement- and feedback-based method to suppress two-qubit-gate noise, which cannot be suppressed by conventional methods. We analyze in detail this method for an error model, which is relevant for trapped-ion quantum information.

The coherence times achieved with continuous dynamical decoupling techniques are often limited by fluctuations in the driving amplitude. In this work, we use time-dependent phase-modulated continuous driving to increase the robustness against such fluctuations in a dense ensemble of nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond. Considering realistic experimental errors in the system, we identify the optimal modulation strength and demonstrate an improvement of an order of magnitude in the spin preservation of arbitrary states over conventional single continuous driving. The phase-modulated driving exhibits results comparable to those found with previously examined amplitude-modulated techniques and is expected to outperform them in experimental systems having higher phase accuracy. The proposed technique could open new avenues for quantum information processing and many-body physics in systems dominated by high-frequency spin-bath noise, for which pulsed dynamical decoupling is less effective.

Recently new approaches for sensing the frequency of time dependent Hamiltonians have been presented, and it was shown that the optimal Fisher information scales as T4. We present here our interpretation of this new scaling, where the relative phase is accumulated quadratically with time, and show that this can be produced by a variety of simple pulse sequences. Interestingly, this scaling has a limited duration, and we show that certain pulse sequences prolong the effect. The performance of these schemes is analyzed and we examine their relevance to state-of-the-art experiments. We analyze the T3 scaling of the Fisher information which appears when multiple synchronized measurements are performed, and is the optimal scaling in the case of a finite coherence time.

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a highly versatile spectroscopy method widely used in diverse disciplines, but its sensitivity and spatial resolution are limited by the inductive measurement of magnetic nuclei. Nano-NMR methods are emerging that aim to measure a single nuclear spin—an improvement in sensitivity of 13 orders of magnitude. The main workhorse of these methods has been atomic defects in diamond, which have distinctive optical and magnetic properties. On page 67 of this issue, Aslam et al. (1) demonstrate a modified sensing scheme based on diamond defects that achieves spectral resolutions sufficient for measuring chemical shifts.

The nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond has shown great promise of nanoscale sensing applications, however, near-surface NV suffer from relatively short spin coherence time that limits its sensitivity. This is presumably caused by improper surface termination. Using first-principles calculations, we propose that nitrogen-terminated (111) diamond provides electrical inactivity and surface spin noise free properties. We anticipate that the nitrogen-terminated (111) surface can be fabricated by nitrogen plasma treatment. Our findings pave the way toward an improved NV-based quantum sensing and quantum simulation operating at room temperature.

Using long-range magnetic gradient induced coupling between three effective spins, a coherent QFT is efficiently realized with trapped Yb⁺ ions. With a single Yb⁺ ion, RF magnetic fields are measured close to the quantum limit.

We present a method of enhanced sensing of AC magnetic fields. The method is based on the construction of a robust qubit by the application of continuous driving fields. Specifically, magnetic noise and power fluctuations of the driving fields do not operate within the robust qubit subspace, hence robustness to both external and controller noise is achieved. The scheme is applicable to either a single ion or an ensemble of ions. We consider trapped-ion based implementation via the dipole transitions, which is relevant for several types of ions, such as the ,  and the  ions. Taking experimental errors into account, we conclude that the coherence time of the robust qubit can be improved by up to ~4 orders of magnitude compared to the coherence time of the bare states. We show how the robust qubit can be utilised for the task of sensing AC magnetic fields in the range  with an improvement of ~2 orders of magnitude of the sensitivity. In addition, we present a microwave-based sensing scheme that is suitable for ions with a hyperfine structure, such as the ,,,,,, and the  ions. This scheme enables the enhanced sensing of high-frequency fields at the GHz level.

Resilience to noise and to decoherence processes is an important ingredient for the implementation of quantum information processing, and quantum technologies. To this end, techniques such as pulsed and continuous dynamical decoupling have been proposed to reduce noise effects. In this paper, we suggest a new approach to implementing continuous dynamical decoupling techniques, that uses an extra control parameter; namely, the ability to shape the time dependence of the detuning. This approach reduces the complexity of the experimental setup, such that we are only left with noise originating from the frequency of the driving field, which is much more robust than the amplitude (Rabi frequency) noise. As an example, we show that our technique can be utilized for improved sensing.