Engineering the Dynamics of Interacting Spins in Solids   

with Dr. Chandrasekhar Ramanathan
Dartmouth College

ABSTRACT: As we seek to engineer increasingly complex quantum systems, a key challenge is to control them in a way that preserves their fragile quantum nature. In systems of electronic and nuclear spins, spin-spin interactions and local variations in Zeeman energy result in a decay of the spin coherence. In this talk I will describe our use of magnetic resonance techniques to selectively control and exploit these interactions, and report on recent results exploring the non-equilibrium behavior of spin systems. I will discuss the measurement of Out-of-Time-Ordered Correlators (OTOCs), which indicate how a local perturbation propagates through an interacting quantum system. Such OTOCs can be used to characterize phases of matter and the thermalization of isolated quantum systems. Finally, I will outline the co-design of quantum computing and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) OTOC experiments to potentially improve large-scale molecular structure determination of complex biomolecules. 

BIOGRAPHY: Chandrasekhar Ramanathan is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Dartmouth College. He received his Sc.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  His lab focuses on the quantum control of electrons and nuclear spins in solids. His research interests include the dynamics of interacting many-body spins, quantum sensing and spectroscopy, and the development of QIS tools to probe materials. He is on the executive editorial board of the IOP Journal Materials for Quantum Technology.

With refreshments from Panera Bread