Coherent excitation of an ensemble of quantum objects underpins quantum many-body phenomena, and offers the opportunity to realize a quantum memory to store information from a qubit. Thus far, a deterministic and coherent interface between a single quantum system, e.g. a qubit, and such an ensemble has remained elusive. We first use an electron to cool the mesoscopic nuclear-spin ensemble of a semiconductor quantum dot to the nuclear sidebandresolved regime. We then implement an all-optical approach to access these individual quantized electronic-nuclear spin transitions. Finally, we perform coherent optical rotations of a single collective nuclear spin excitation corresponding to a spin wave called a nuclear magnon. These results constitute the building blocks of a dedicated local memory per quantum-dot spin qubit and promise a solid-state platform for quantum-state engineering of isolated many-body systems.
A resident electron spin in a semiconductor nanostructure is an interface to an ensemble of nuclear spins, and witnesses the creation of entanglement within the ensemble in the form of dark-state coherences.
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