Detecting Larmor Precession of a Single Spin with a Spin-Polarized Tunneling Current

Detection and manipulation of a single spin is essential for spin-based quantum information and computation. We propose an experimental method to detect the Larmor precession of a single spin with a spin-polarized tunneling current. The calculation demonstrates that the modulation of the tunneling current is significantly increased as compared with the non-spin-polarized current. The signal-to-noise ratio in the current power spectrum will be dramatically improved by this method. The longitudinal relaxation time can be measured by temporal control of spin orientation with pulses of magnetic field or radio frequency electromagnetic wave, while the transverse relaxation time can be derived by analyzing the resonant peak profile with a spectrum analyzer. Such ability in characterizing spin relaxation is of particular interest in providing insights into the coherence/decoherence of a single spin.