A two-qubit molecular architecture for electron-mediated nuclear quantum simulation

A switchable interaction between pairs of highly coherent qubits is a crucial ingredient for the physical realization of quantum information processing. One promising route to enable quantum logic operations involves the use of nuclear spins as protected elementary units of information, qubits. Here we propose a simple way to use fast electronic spin excitations to switch the effective interaction between nuclear spin qubits and the realization of a two-qubit molecular architecture based on highly coherent vanadyl moieties to implement quantum logic operations. Controlled generation of entanglement between qubits is possible here through chemically tuned magnetic coupling between electronic spins, which is clearly evidenced by the splitting of the vanadium(iv) hyperfine lines in the continuous-wave electron paramagnetic resonance spectrum. The system has been further characterized by pulsed electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy, evidencing remarkably long coherence times. The experimentally derived spin Hamiltonian parameters have been used to simulate the system dynamics under the sequence of pulses required to implement quantum gates in a realistic description that includes also the harmful effect of decoherence. This demonstrates the possibility of using this molecular complex to implement a control-Z (CZ) gate and simple quantum simulations. Indeed, we also propose a proof-of-principle experiment based on the simulation of the quantum tunneling of the magnetization in a S = 1 spin system.