Electron-mediated projective quantum nondemolition measurement on a nuclear spin

Abstract: Projective quantum nondemolition (QND) measurement is important for quantum technologies. Here we propose a method for constructing projective QND measurement on a nuclear spin via the measurement of an axillary electron spin in generic electron-nuclear spin systems coupled through weak hyperfine interaction. The key idea is to apply suitable quantum control on the electron to construct a weak QND measurement on the nuclear spin and then cascade a sequence of such measurements into a projective one. We identify a set of tunable parameters to select the QND observables and control the strength of the weak QND measurement. We also find that the QND measurement can be stabilized against realistic experimental control errors. As a demonstration of our method, we design projective QND measurement on a $^{13}$C nuclear spin weakly coupled to a nitrogen-vacancy center electron spin in diamond.