TY - JOUR T1 - Coherence of an optically illuminated single nuclear spin qubit JF - Physical Review Letters Y1 - 2008 A1 - Liang Jiang A1 - M. V. Gurudev Dutt A1 - Emre Togan A1 - Lily Childress A1 - Paola Cappellaro A1 - J. M. Taylor A1 - Mikhail D. Lukin AB - We investigate the coherence properties of individual nuclear spin quantum bits in diamond [Dutt et al., Science, 316, 1312 (2007)] when a proximal electronic spin associated with a nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center is being interrogated by optical radiation. The resulting nuclear spin dynamics are governed by time-dependent hyperfine interaction associated with rapid electronic transitions, which can be described by a spin-fluctuator model. We show that due to a process analogous to motional averaging in nuclear magnetic resonance, the nuclear spin coherence can be preserved after a large number of optical excitation cycles. Our theoretical analysis is in good agreement with experimental results. It indicates a novel approach that could potentially isolate the nuclear spin system completely from the electronic environment. VL - 100 UR - http://arxiv.org/abs/0707.1341v2 CP - 7 J1 - Phys. Rev. Lett. U5 - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.073001 ER -