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As scientists living through a climate emergency, we have a responsibility to lead by example, or to at least be consistent with our understanding of the problem. This common goal of reducing the carbon footprint of our work can be approached through a variety of strategies. For theoreticians, this includes not only optimizing algorithms and improving computational efficiency but also adopting a frugal approach to modeling. Here we present and critically illustrate this principle. First, we compare two models of very different level of sophistication which nevertheless yield the same qualitative agreement with an experiment involving electric manipulation of molecular spin qubits while presenting a difference in cost of $>4$ orders of magnitude. As a second stage, an already minimalistic model of the potential use of single-ion magnets to implement a network of probabilistic p-bits, programmed in two different programming languages, is shown to present a difference in cost of a factor of $\simeq 50$. In both examples, the computationally expensive version of the model was the one that was published. As a community, we still have a lot of room for improvement in this direction.

Enhanced coherence in HoW$_{10}$ molecular spin qubits has been demonstrated by use of Clock Transitions (CTs). More recently it was shown that, while operating at the CTs, it was possible to use an electrical field to selectively address HoW$_{10}$ molecules pointing in a given direction, within a crystal that contains two kinds of identical but inversion-related molecules. Herein we theoretically explore the possibility of employing the electric field to effect entangling two-qubit quantum gates among two neighbouring CT-protected HoW$_{10}$ qubits within a diluted crystal. We estimate the thermal evolution of $T_1$, $T_2$, find that CTs are also optimal operating points from the point of view of phonons, and lay out how to combine a sequence of microwave and electric field pulses to achieve coherent control within a 2-qubit operating space that is protected both from spin-bath and from phonon-bath decoherence. Finally, we found a highly protected 1-qubit subspace resulting from the interaction between two clock molecules., Comment: updated with minor corrections

To design molecular spin qubits with enhanced quantum coherence, a control of the coupling between the local vibrations and the spin states is crucial, which could be realized in principle by engineering molecular structures via coordination chemistry. To this end, understanding the underlying structural factors that govern the spin relaxation is a central topic. Here, we report the investigation of the spin dynamics in a series of chemically-designed europium(II)-based endohedral metallofullerenes (EMFs). By introducing a unique structural difference, i.e. metal-cage binding site, while keeping other molecular parameters constant between different complexes, these manifest the key role of the three low energy metal-based vibrations in mediating the spin-lattice relaxation times (T1). The temperature dependence of T1 can thus be normalized by the frequencies of these low energy vibrations to show an unprecedentedly universal behavior for EMFs in frozen CS2 solution. Our theoretical analysis indicates that this structural difference determines not only the vibrational rigidity but also spin-vibration coupling in these EMF-based qubit candidates.

Spin-lattice relaxation is a key open problem to understand the spin dynamics of single-molecule magnets and molecular spin qubits. While modelling the coupling between spin states and local vibrations allows to determine the more relevant molecular vibrations for spin relaxation, this is not sufficient to explain how energy is dissipated towards the thermal bath. Herein, we employ a simple and efficient model to examine the coupling of local vibrational modes with long-wavelength longitudinal and transverse phonons in the clock-like spin qubit [Ho(W$_5$O$_{18}$)$_2$]$^{9-}$. We find that in crystals of this polyoxometalate the vibrational mode previously found to be vibronically active at low temperature does not couple significantly to lattice phonons. This means that further intramolecular energy transfer via anharmonic vibrations is necessary for spin relaxation in this system. Finally, we discuss implications for the spin-phonon coupling of [Ho(W$_5$O$_{18}$)$_2$]$^{9-}$ deposited on a MgO (001) substrate, offering a simple methodology that can be extrapolated to estimate the effects on spin relaxation of different surfaces, including 2D materials.