Coherent State Transfer between an Electron and Nuclear Spin in N-15@C-60

Electron spin qubits in molecular systems offer high reproducibility and the ability to self-assemble into larger architectures. However, interactions between neighboring qubits are "always on," and although the electron spin coherence times can be several hundred microseconds, these are still much shorter than typical times for nuclear spins. Here we implement an electron-nuclear hybrid scheme which uses coherent transfer between electron and nuclear spin degrees of freedom in order to both effectively turn on or off interqubit coupling mediated by dipolar interactions and benefit from the long nuclear spin decoherence times (T_2n). We transfer qubit states between the electron and N15 nuclear spin in N15@C₆₀ with a two-way process fidelity of 88%, using a series of tuned microwave and radio frequency pulses and measure a nuclear spin coherence lifetime of over 100 ms. © 2011 American Physical Society.