All-electrical driving and probing of dressed states in a single spin

Abstract

The sub-nanometer distance between tip and sample in a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) enables the application of very large electric fields with a strength as high as ~ 1 GV/m. This has allowed for efficient electrical driving of Rabi oscillations of a single spin on a surface at a moderate radio-frequency (RF) voltage of the order of tens of millivolts. Here, we demonstrate the creation of dressed states of a single electron spin localized in the STM tunnel junction by using resonant RF driving voltages. The read-out of these dressed states was achieved all-electrical by a weakly coupled probe spin. Our work highlights the strength of the atomic-scale geometry inherent to the STM that facilitates creation and control of dressed states, which are promising for a design of atomically well-defined single spin quantum devices on surfaces.