Observation of time-domain Rabi oscillations in the Landau-Zener regime with a single electronic spin

Phys Rev Lett. 2014 Jan 10;112(1):010503. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.010503. Epub 2014 Jan 9.

Abstract

It is theoretically known that the quantum interference of a long sequence of Landau-Zener transitions can result in Rabi oscillations. Because of its stringent requirements, however, this phenomenon has never been experimentally observed in the time domain. Using a nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center spin in isotopically purified diamond, we observed the Rabi oscillations resulting from more than 100 Landau-Zener processes. Our results demonstrate favorable quantum controllability of NV centers, which could find applications in quantum metrology and quantum information processing.