Cornell physicists have found that the spin of an electron in a carbon nanotube is coupled — that is, interacts with — the electron’s orbit.

The finding means researchers will have to change the way they read out or change spin in using nanotubes in quantum computing, but offers a new way to manipulate the spin, by manipulating the orbit.

Until now, physicists believed that the four possible states of an electron in a carbon nanotube–spin up or down, and orbit clockwise or counterclockwise–must be equivalent.