Collective many-body dynamics in a solid-state quantum sensor controlled through nanoscale magnetic gradients

Abstract

Coherent collective dynamics of strongly interacting qubits are a central resource in quantum information science, with applications from quantum computing and simulation to metrology. While electronic spins interact strongly via dipolar couplings in dense solid-state ensembles, imperfections and positional disorder pose major obstacles to coherent correlated behavior, limiting their usefulness. Here, we realize collective many-body dynamics by combining time-dependent magnetic field gradients with global coherent control of dense electron spin ensembles in diamond. We control and probe the dynamics of nanometer-scale spin spirals, and, by exploiting Hamiltonian engineering that enhances the microscopic symmetry of the interactions, we observe a disorder-resilient collective spin evolution. Our results establish a pathway to interaction-enhanced quantum metrology and nanoscale imaging of materials and biological systems under ambient conditions.