The work was carried out with the support of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation
Researchers from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) together with French colleagues experimentally demonstrated: if impurities are added to certain semiconductors, the electrons of impurity atoms will retain the direction of spin— their own magnetic moment. This may take a long time (few nanoseconds by quantum standards). Due to the long spin coherence time, these atomic systems can be used as qubits in a quantum computer.
In the new work, scientists from the MIPT Center for Advanced Methods of Mesophysics and Nanotechnology replaced part of the tellurium atoms in molybdenum telluride dichalcogenide (2H-MoTe2) with bromine atoms and using electron paramagnetic resonance and tunneling scanning microscopy, studied the structure of impurity atom electrons and estimated the coherence time of the system.
Thus, scientists showed the possibility of using real atoms as qubits and theoretically explained the long coherence time by building the electronic structure of the material.