Solid-State Spin Control and AI-Autonomous Quantum Experiments

by Dr Shihao Ru (茹世浩) (Nanyang Technological University)

Thursday 8 Oct 2026, 14:00 → 15:00 Asia/Shanghai

Tsung-Dao Lee Institute/N6F-N600 - Lecture Room (Tsung-Dao Lee Institute)

Host: Prof. Baiqing Lyu  

Venue: TDLI Meeting Room N600

 

Abstract:

Solid-state spins underpin quantum sensing and quantum information processing. Operating them still takes manual work: calibrating complex pulse sequences, coordinating multiple instruments, and running long acquisitions. I will first present our spin-defect work on two platforms: hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) and nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centres in diamond. The hBN results span coherent spin control and readout, nuclear spin polarization, double-quantum driving, and electrical readout.

I will then describe how we integrate our AI automation system QDevBot into quantum spin experiments, from instrument communication to data analysis. Resonance searches, pulse calibration, coherence measurements, and their results all land in a traceable workflow, because we connect instrument control, waveform generation, and physics-model analysis. I will show two-axis control of hBN spins under continuous-driving protection, and NV hyperfine spectra that parse automatically. The same work extends to hardware. We are building our own FPGA/RFSoC control board for experiments that need many synchronized channels and real-time feedback, quantum computing among them.

Finally, our recent work Evaluating Verified Autonomy in Quantum Engineering produced two things. The first is the virtual laboratory Quantum-Harbor; the second is QIQCBench, a benchmark of 49 expert-designed tasks for evaluating 17 frontier agent systems. We judge quantum engineering capability on how an agent runs a task and what it produces. Agents can demonstrate a task and still fail to run it autonomously. That is the gap we found, and it sets up the next step: evaluating and improving real experimental systems.

 

References:

[1] Evaluating Verified Autonomy in Quantum Engineering, Naixu Guo*,†, Changhao Li*,†, Siyu Cheng*, Qicheng Tang*, Binzhao Luo, Bikun Li, Yuxuan Du, Shihao Ru † , Jiaqi Cai†, arXiv preprint arXiv:2609.17439 (2026).

[2] Double-Quantum Enhanced Coherent Control and Magnetic Sensing of Spin Defects in Hexagonal Boron Nitride, Shihao Ru, Abdullah Rasmita, Jiakai Chen, et al., under review at Phys. Rev. Lett.

[3] Room-Temperature Electrical Readout of Spin Defects in van der Waals Materials，Shihao Ru, Liheng An, Haidong Liang, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett., 135, 220802 (2025).

[4] Robust nuclear spin polarization via ground-state level anticrossing of boron vacancy defects in hexagonal boron nitride, Shihao Ru*, Zhengzhi Jiang*, Haidong Liang*, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett., 132, 266801 (2024).

 

Biography:

Dr Shihao Ru obtained bachelor degree and PhD degree from XJTU under the guidance of Prof. Fuli Li in 2018 and 2023. From August 2023 to March 2025, he served as a Research Fellow at the Centre for Quantum Technologies, National University of Singapore. He is currently with the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Nanyang Technological University under Prof Weibo Gao. His research interests include quantum sensing, spin control and AI for quantum science.