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Updated: Aug 13, 2025

Direct Imaging of Laser-driven Ultrafast Molecular Rotation
Published on: February 4, 2017
Nonadiabatic dynamics and geometric phase of an ultrafast rotating electron spin
Xing-Yan Chen1, Tongcang Li2, Zhang-Qi Yin3
1Center for Quantum Information, Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China; Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, Garching 85748, Germany; Fakultät für Physik, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, München 80799, Germany.
Abstract:
The spin in a rotating frame has attracted a lot of attentions recently, as it deeply relates to both fundamental physics such as pseudo-magnetic field and geometric phase, and applications such as gyroscopic sensors. However, previous studies only focused on adiabatic limit, where the rotating frequency is much smaller than the spin frequency. Here we propose to use a levitated nano-diamond with a built-in nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center to study the dynamics and the geometric phase of a rotating electron spin without adiabatic approximation. We find that the transition between the spin levels appears when the rotating frequency is comparable to the spin frequency at zero magnetic field. Then we use Floquet theory to numerically solve the spin energy spectrum, study the spin dynamics and calculate the geometric phase under a finite magnetic field, where the rotating frequency to induce resonant transition could be greatly reduced.
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