Gyroscopically stabilized quantum spin rotors

Abstract

Recent experiments demonstrate all-electric spinning of levitated nanodiamonds with embedded nitrogen-vacancy spins. Here, we argue that such gyroscopically stabilized spin rotors offer a promising platform for probing and exploiting quantum spin-rotation coupling of particles hosting a single spin degree of freedom. Specifically, we derive the effective Hamiltonian describing how an embedded spin affects the rotation of rapidly revolving quantum rotors due to the Einstein-de Haas and Barnett effects, which we use to devise experimental protocols for observing this coupling in state-of-the-art experiments. This will open the door for future exploitations of quantum spin rotors for superposition experiments with massive objects.