Nuclear spins in a crystal can be detected and manipulated through their interactions with the more accessible electron spin of a neighboring crystal defect. This strategy has enabled nanoscale magnetic resonance imaging and other quantum applications. But a long-standing challenge has been to target a specific nuclear spin, while protecting the delicate quantum nature of the electron spin. Important progress on this challenge has now been achieved by two teams at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands [1, 2].
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