Awschalom Group

Spintronics, solid-state, and molecular quantum information science for computing, sensing, and communication

Recent News

Our group research focuses on optical, electronic, and magnetic interactions in solid state quantum structures, spin dynamics and coherence in condensed matter systems (“spintronics”), and implementations of quantum computing, communication and sensing with semiconductors and molecules.

Listen to Professor Awschalom discuss the Q-NEXT research consortium and the future of quantum science and engineering in Chicago on the Big Brains podcast (transcript in link)

 

Principal Investigator

David Awschalom

David Awschalom

awsch@uchicago.edu

Spin Dynamics and Quantum Information Processing in Semiconductors and Molecules

Our group is primarily concerned with understanding electron and nuclear spin dynamics in semiconductors and molecules as well as engineering quantum states for information processing and sensing applications. Our experimental program combines quantum optics with electron-spin resonance, materials engineering, and nanofabrication. We are focused on developing experimental tools and uncovering new systems that could expand the technological impact of quantum coherence in emerging material systems. Certain point defects in semiconductors, such as the nitrogen vacancy center in diamond or the neutral divacancy in silicon carbide, exhibit long-lived spin coherence that persist up to room temperature. The ability to design individual quantum states and their hosts with the power of chemical synthesis offers new opportunities for the field, spanning quantum sensing, communication, and computing. Harnessing these spin states as atomic-scale probes of electromagnetic fields promises to lead to nanoscale nuclear magnetic resonance, new tools for bio-sensing, and a better understanding of semiconductor electronics.

To read more about our studies, explore the links below:

Quantum Information Processing in Diamond

The fundamental quantum-mechanical nature of spin makes it an ideal candidate for use as a quantum bit, the basic unit of information in a quantum computing architecture. Individual spins may be initialized, coherently controlled, and read out using a variety of optical and electronic techniques. In particular, point defects in crystals have many analogous properties to atoms trapped in vacuum, including localized electronic states and sharp optical and spin transitions. In certain defects, electronic spin states are insulated from lattice dynamics, leading to long quantum coherence times that persist even up to room temperature.

Spin Control in Silicon Carbide and Other Materials

We are exploring defects in a variety of wide-bandgap materials, such as the divacancy in silicon carbide (SiC). We investigate these defects for both fundamental and applied studies of quantum information processing as well as for developing hybrid quantum systems and nanoscale sensing.

Enhancing spin coherence in optically addressable molecular qubits through host-matrix control

S. L. Bayliss, P. Deb, D. W. Laorenza, M. Onizhuk, G. Galli, D. E. Freedman, D. D. Awschalom. Enhancing spin coherence in optically addressable molecular qubits through host-matrix control. Phys. Rev. X. 2022. Vol. 12. 10.1103/PhysRevX.12.031028.

Purcell enhancement of erbium ions in TiO2 on silicon nanocavities

A. M. Dibos, M. T. Solomon, S. E. Sullivan, M. K. Singh, K. E. Sautter, C. P. Horn, G. D. Grant, Y. Lin, J. Wen, F. J. Heremans, S. Guha, D. D. Awschalom. Purcell enhancement of erbium ions in TiO2 on silicon nanocavities. arXiv. 2022. 2204.09859.

Generalized scaling of spin qubit coherence in over 12,000 host materials

S. Kanai, F. J.Heremans, H. Seo, G. Wolfowicz, C. P. Anderson, S. E. Sullivan, M. Onizhuk, G. Galli, D. D. Awschalom, H. Ohno. Generalized scaling of spin qubit coherence in over 12,000 host materials. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 2022. Vol. 119. 10.1073/pnas.2121808119.

Development of a Scalable Quantum Memory Platform -- Materials Science of Erbium-Doped TiO2 Thin Films on Silicon

M. K. Singh, G. Wolfowicz, J. Wen, S. E. Sullivan, A. Prakash, A. M. Dibos, D. D. Awschalom, F. J. Heremans, S. Guha. Development of a scalable quantum memory platform -- materials science of erbium-doped TiO2 thin films on silicon. arXiv. 2022. 2202.05376.

Five-second coherence of a single spin with single-shot readout in silicon carbide

C. P. Anderson, E. O. Glen, C. Zeledon, A. Bourassa, Y. Jin, Y. Zhu, C. Vorwerk, A. L. Crook, H. Abe, J. Ul-Hassan, T. Ohshima, N. T. Son, G. Galli, D. D. Awschalom. Five-second coherence of a single spin with single-shot readout in silicon carbide. 2022. Sci. Adv. Vol. 8. 10.1126/sciadv.abm5912.

Tunable and Transferable Diamond Membranes for Integrated Quantum Technologies

X. Guo, N. Delegan, J. C. Karsch, Z. Li, T. Liu, R. Shreiner, A. Butcher, D. D. Awschalom, F. J. Heremans, A. A. High. Tunable and Transferable Diamond Membranes for Integrated Quantum Technologies. 2021. Nano. Lett. 10.1021/acs.nanolett.1c03703.

Tunable Cr4+ molecular color centers

D. W. Laorenza, A. Kairalapova, S. L. Bayliss, T. Goldzak, S. M. Greene, L. R. Weiss, P. Deb, P. J. Mintun, K. A. Collins, D. D. Awschalom, T. C. Berkelbach, D. E. Freedman. Tunable Cr4+ molecular color centers. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2021. 10.1021/jacs.1c10145.

Parasitic erbium photoluminescence in commercial telecom fiber optical components

G. Wolfowicz, F. J. Heremans, D. D. Awschalom. Parasitic erbium photoluminescence in commercial telecom fiber optical components. Opt. Lett. 2021. Vol. 46. 10.1364/OL.437417.

Opportunities for long-range magnon-mediated entanglement of spin qubits via on- and off-resonant coupling

M. Fukami, D. R. Candido, D. D. Awschalom, M. E. Flatté. Opportunities for long-range magnon-mediated entanglement of spin qubits via on- and off-resonant coupling. PRX Quantum. 2021. Vol. 2. 10.1103/PRXQuantum.2.040314.

Relaxation of a single defect spin by the low-frequency gyrotropic mode of a magnetic vortex

J. Trimble, B. Gould, F. J. Heremans, S. S.-L. Zhang, D. D. Awschalom, J. Berezovsky. Relaxation of a single defect spin by the low-frequency gyrotropic mode of a magnetic vortex. J. Appl. Phys. 2021. Vol. 130. 10.1063/5.0055595.

View All Publications
Name Institution
Paul Alivisatos University of Chicago
Dimitri Basov University of California, San Diego
Guido Burkard University of Konstanz
Andrew Cleland University of Chicago
David DiVincenzo RWTH Aachen
Viatcheslav Dobrovitski Ames Laboratory and Iowa State University
Philip Feng Case Western Reserve University
Michael Flatté University of Iowa
Danna Freedman Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Adam Gali Budapest University of Technology and Economics
Ronald Hanson TU Delft
Mark Hersam Northwestern University
Evelyn Hu Harvard University
Ania Bleszynski Jayich University of California, Santa Barbara
H. Jeff Kimble California Institute of Technology
Jeremy Levy University of Pittsburgh
Jeff Long University of California, Berkeley
Daniel Loss University of Basel
Roberto Myers The Ohio State University
Hideo Ohno Tohoku University
Joe Orenstein University of California, Berkeley
Oskar Painter California Institute of Technology
Chris Palmstrøm University of California, Santa Barbara
Peter Rakich Yale University
Dan Rugar IBM Almaden Research Center
Nitin Samarth Pennsylvania State University
Thomas Schenkel Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Darrell Schlom Cornell University
David Schuster University of Chicago
Chris van de Walle University of California, Santa Barbara
Stephan von Molnar Florida State University
Jelena Vuckovic Stanford University
Ali Yazdani Princeton University
  • Benjamín Alemán
    Postdoctoral Alumni; Department of Physics, University of Oregon
  • Chris Anderson
    Postdoctoral and Graduate Student Alumnus; Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University
  • Paolo Andrich
    Graduate Student Alumni; HAL24K
  • Lee Bassett
    Postdoctoral Alumni; Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering, University of Pennsylvania
  • Jeremy Baumberg
    Postdoctoral Alumni; Hitachi Cambridge Research Center
  • Sam Bayliss
    Postdoctoral alumnus; Electronics and Nanoscale Division of the James Watt School of Engineering, University of Glasgow
  • Jesse Berezovsky
    Graduate Student Alumni; Department of Physics, Case Western Reserve University
  • Bernd Beschoten
    Postdoctoral Alumni; RWTH Aachen, Germany
  • Joerg Bochmann
    Postdoctoral Alumni; TRUMPF Lasertechnik
  • Alexandre Bourassa
    Graduate Student Alumnus; Google, Santa Barbara, CA
  • Hope Bretscher
    Undergraduate Student Alumni; Department of Physics, University of Cambridge
  • Bob Buckley
    Graduate Student Alumni Freedom Photonics, Santa Barbara, California
  • Greg Calusine
    Graduate Student Alumni MIT Lincoln Laboratory
  • Darius Choksy
    Undergraduate Student Alumni; Department of Physics, UC San Diego
  • David Christle
    Graduate Student Alumni LinkedIn Corporation, Mountain View, California
  • Agnetta Cleland
    Undergraduate Student Alumni; Department of Applied Physics, Stanford University
  • Alex Crook
    Graduate Student Alumnus; Google, Santa Barbara, CA
  • Scott Crooker
    Graduate Student Alumni; Los Alamos National Laboratory / NHMFL
  • Paul Crowell
    Postdoctoral Alumni; Department of Physics, University of Minnesota
  • Charles de las Casas
    Graduate Student Alumni Integra Credit
  • Ryan Epstein
    Graduate Student Alumni; Northrop Grumman Corporation
  • Abram Falk
    Postdoctoral Alumni; IBM Watson Research Center
  • Mark Field
    Postdoctoral Alumni; Symyx Corporation
  • Mark R. Freeman
    Postdoctoral Alumni; Department of Physics, University of Alberta
  • Dan Fuchs
    Postdoctoral Alumni; Lucent Laboratories
  • Greg Fuchs
    Postdoctoral Alumni; Department of Applied and Engineering Physics, Cornell University
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    Postdoctoral Alumni; Department of Physics, UC Merced
  • Savas Gider
    Graduate Student Alumni; Apple Inc.
  • Jay Gupta
    Graduate Student Alumni; Department of Physics, The Ohio State University
  • Oliver Gywat
    Postdoctoral Alumni; Credit Suisse, Zurich
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    Undergraduate Student Alumni; Department of Applied Physics, Harvard University
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    Postdoctoral Alumni; Department of Physics, Delft University of Technology
  • Jack Harris
    Graduate Student Alumni; Department of Physics, Yale University
  • Alex Holleitner
    Postdoctoral Alumni; Walter Schottky Institute, TMU
  • Viva Horowitz
    Graduate Student Alumni; Department of Physics, Hamilton College
  • Paul Jerger
    Graduate Student Alumnus; Materials & Microsystems Laboratory, HRL Laboratories
  • Ezekiel Johnston-Halperin
    Graduate Student Alumni; Department of Physics, The Ohio State University
  • Yuichiro Kato
    Graduate Student Alumni; Department of Applied Physics, University of Tokyo
  • Roland Kawakami
    Postdoctoral Alumni; Department of Physics, The Ohio State University
  • Jay Kikkawa
    Graduate Student Alumni; Postdoctoral Alumni; Department of Physics, University of Pennsylvania
  • Paul Klimov
    Graduate Student Alumni; Google, Santa Barbara, California
  • Rob Knobel
    Postdoctoral Alumni; Department of Physics, Queen's University
  • Hadrian Knotz
    Graduate Student Alumni; Senior Systems Architect, Solver, Inc.
  • William Koehl
    Graduate Student Alumni; Quantum Computing Research, Northrop Grumman Corporation
  • Berk Diler Kovos
    Postdoctoral and Graduate Student Alumnus; Quantum Machines
  • Wayne Lau
    Postdoctoral Alumni; EPIR Technologies Inc.
  • Hope Lee
    Undergraduate Student Alumni; Department of Applied Physics, Stanford University
  • Seung Hwan Lee
    Undergraduate Student Alumni; Department of Physics, Harvard University
  • Jeremy Levy
    Postdoctoral Alumni; Department of Physics, University of Pittsburgh
  • Yongqing Li
    Postdoctoral Alumni; Max Planck Institute, Stuttgart
  • Shawn Mack
    Graduate Student Alumni; Naval Research Laboratory
  • Brian Maertz
    Graduate Student Alumni; Freedom Photonics, Santa Barbara, California
  • Irina Malajovich
    Graduate Student Alumni; Dupont Research, DE
  • Florian Meier
    Postdoctoral Alumni; Patent law
  • Ines Meinel
    Postdoctoral Alumni; Dupont Displays
  • Felix Mendoza
    Graduate Student Alumni; TILL I.D. GmbH, Munich, Germany
  • Kevin Miao
    Graduate Student Alumni; Google, Santa Barbara, CA
  • Maiken Mikkelsen
    Graduate Student Alumni; Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Duke University
  • Peter Mintun
    Graduate Student Alumnus; Arch Ventures
  • Roberto Myers
    Graduate Student Alumni; Postdoctoral Alumni; Department of Materials Science and Engineering, The Ohio State University
  • Vladimir Nikitin
    Graduate Student Alumni; Samsung Semiconductor Inc.
  • Mark Nowakowski
    Graduate Student Alumni; Boeing Research and Technology, California
  • Kenichi Ohno
    Graduate Student Alumni; Applied Materials, Santa Clara, California
  • Min Ouyang
    Postdoctoral Alumni; Department of Physics, University of Maryland
  • Ananya Pillutla
    Undergraduate Student Alumni; Marshall, Gerstein & Borun, Chicago, Illinois
  • Martino Poggio
    Graduate Student Alumni; Department of Physics, University of Basel
  • Alberto Politi
    Postdoctoral Alumni; Department of Physics, University of Southampton
  • Mark B. Ritter
    Postdoctoral Alumni; IBM Watson Research Center
  • Gian Salis
    Postdoctoral Alumni; IBM Zurich Research Laboratory
  • Jing Shi
    Postdoctoral Alumni; Department of Physics, UC Riverside
  • Vanessa Sih
    Graduate Student Alumni; Department of Physics, University of Michigan
  • Joseph Smyth
    Postdoctoral Alumni; IBM Almaden Research Center
  • Geoff Steeves
    Postdoctoral Alumni; Department of Physics, University of Victoria
  • Jason Stephens
    Graduate Student Alumni; Postdoctoral Alumni; Thinsilicon Corporation
  • Nate Stern
    Graduate Student Alumni Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University
  • David Steuerman
    Postdoctoral Alumni; CNA Corporation
  • Sean Sullivan
    Argonne-Affiliated Postdoctoral Alumnus; memQ Inc.
  • Ashish Thapliyal
    Graduate Student Alumni; Department of Computer Science, UC Berkeley
  • David Toyli
    Graduate Student Alumni IBM Watson Research Center
  • David Tulchinsky
    Graduate Student Alumni; Naval Research Laboratory
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    Postdoctoral Alumni; Advanced Semiconductor Materials International (ASML)
  • Erzsebet Vincent
    Graduate Student Alumna
  • James Warnock
    Postdoctoral Alumni; IBM Watson Research Center
  • Maya Watts
    GEM Fellow Alumni; Department of Physics, Northwestern University
  • Marie Wesson
    Undergraduate Student Alumni; Department of Applied Physics, Harvard University
  • Samuel Whiteley
    Graduate Student Alumni; HRL Laboratories, LLC
  • Gary Wolfowicz
    Postdoctoral and Assistant Staff Scientist Alumnus; Photonic Inc
  • Xu Xiao
    Undergraduate Student Alumni; Department of Physics, Yale University
  • Christopher Yale
    Graduate Student Alumni Sandia National Laboratory
  • Andrew Yeats
    Graduate Student Alumni Naval Research Laboratory
  • Darron Young
    Graduate Student Alumni; Intel Corporation
  • Brian Zhou
    Postdoctoral Alumni; Department of Physics, Boston College

Spintronics

Spintronics, the storage and transport of electronic spins in semiconductor devices may revolutionize the electronic device industry, with spin based transistors, memories, and opto-electronic devices replacing their charge-based counterparts. For instance, giant and tunnel magnetoresistance effects are already used in modern hard drives, and non-volatile spin-logic devices are being studied for inclusion in future computers. Ultimately, spintronics could bring practical logic and memory down to the single electron spin level.

Magnetic Semiconductors

The exchange couplings present in magnetically-doped semiconductors are orders of magnitude larger in energy than the spin-orbit and hyperfine interactions, and the interactions between carriers and magnetic ions in magnetic semiconductors may be engineered through heterostructures grown with molecular beam epitaxy.

Measurement Techniques

Spin phenomena may be quantified to a striking degree of precision using a variety of optical and electronic techniques that enable one to probe spin dynamics as a function of time and space.

Tunable Cr4+ molecular color centers

Quantum guidelines for solid-state spin defects

Developing silicon carbide for quantum spintronics

Atomic layer deposition of titanium nitride for quantum circuits

Opportunities for basic research for next-generation quantum systems

Optical manipulation of the Berry phase in a solid-state spin qubit

Optical Polarization of Nuclear Spins in Silicon Carbide

Isolated electron spins in silicon carbide with millisecond coherence times

Ultrafast optical control of orbital and spin dynamics in a solid-state defect

Electrically Driven Spin Resonance in Silicon Carbide Color Centers

A quantum memory intrinsic to single nitrogen–vacancy centres in diamond

Spintronics without magnetism

Spintronics, Volume 82

J. Berezovsky*, M. H. Mikkelsen*, et al., Science 320, 349, (2008) / R. Hanson, et al., Science 320, 352, (2008)

Anisotropic interactions of a single spin and dark-spin spectroscopy in diamond

Observation of the Spin Hall Effect in Semiconductors

Optical and electronic manipulation of spin coherence in semiconductors

Spintronics

Semiconductor Spintronics and Quantum Computation

Ultrafast Manipulation of Electron Spin Coherence

Electron Spin and Optical Coherence in Semiconductors

Lateral drag of spin coherence in gallium arsenide

Jacob and Cyrus celebrate the end of a successful summer with summer students Elizabeth and Tiarna (August 2022)

Erszi, Masaya, and Berk, some of the first Quantum Science and Engineering PhD graduates, graduated today! (June 2022)

Comedian and quantum enthusiast James Murray gets a birthday lab tour with Leah and Berk, 2022

Grant sets up long fibers in our basement for the quantum LAN, 2020

Chicago Quantum Exchange, 2019

Tommy La Stella visits the lab, 2018

Revolution Brewing, 2016

The past and present melt together, Himeji Castle, 2016

Complete photo gallery