Speaker
Description
Optically addressable electron spins in solids – point defects in diamond, silicon carbide and two-dimensional materials, and molecular spins – are leading platforms for room-temperature quantum sensing. Their development benefits from a close loop between theory and experiment: first-principles simulations on high-performance computers predict structures and spin and optical fingerprints, measurements test the predictions, and the data in turn refine the models. I will illustrate this approach with two recent results. First, together with colleagues at the University of Stuttgart, we showed that pentacene molecules anchored on hexagonal boron nitride act as optically readable spin sensors with zero depth. Density functional theory calculations explain how the molecules bind upright to surface defects and why their zero-field splitting increases. Deuteration and dynamical decoupling extend the spin coherence time beyond 300 µs, and the sensors detect proton spins and a 2D magnet at room temperature. Second, our laboratory introduced pulse-free quantum relaxometry under continuous-wave excitation. It measures the spin relaxation time T₁ from 60 µs to 200 ms with a single method, and it speeds up nanodiamond-based sensing of ions in water. Finally, I will outline opportunities for academia–industry collaboration in quantum sensing and in HPC- and machine-learning-driven materials design.