Diagnosing phases of magnetic insulators via noise magnetometry with spin qubits

Abstract: Two-dimensional magnetic insulators exhibit a plethora of competing ground states, such as ordered (anti)ferromagnets, exotic quantum spin liquid states with topological order and anyonic excitations, and random singlet phases emerging in highly disordered frustrated magnets. Here we show how single spin qubits, which interact directly with the low-energy excitations of magnetic insulators, can be used as a diagnostic of magnetic ground states. Experimentally tunable parameters, such as qubit level splitting, sample temperature, and qubit-sample distance, can be used to measure spin correlations with energy and wavevector resolution. Such resolution can be exploited, for instance, to distinguish between fractionalized excitations in spin liquids and spin waves in magnetically ordered states, or to detect anyonic statistics in gapped systems.