Individual control and readout of qubits in a sub-diffraction volume

Abstract

Medium-scale ensembles of coupled qubits offer a platform for near-term quantum technologies as well as studies of many-body physics. A central challenge for coherent control of such systems is the ability to measure individual quantum states without disturbing nearby qubits. Here, we demonstrate the measurement of individual qubit states in a sub-diffraction cluster by selectively exciting spectrally distinguishable nitrogen vacancy centers. We perform super-resolution localization of single centers with nanometer spatial resolution, as well as individual control and readout of spin populations. These measurements indicate a readout-induced crosstalk on non-addressed qubits below 4 × 10−2. This approach opens the door to high-speed control and measurement of qubit registers in mesoscopic spin clusters, with applications ranging from entanglement-enhanced sensors to error-corrected qubit registers to multiplexed quantum repeater nodes.