No Arabic abstract
We report a study of the 3E excited-state structure of single nitrogen-vacancy (NV) defects in diamond, combining resonant excitation at cryogenic temperatures and optically detected magnetic resonance. A theoretical model of the excited-state structure is developed and shows excellent agreement with experimental observations. Besides, we show that the two orbital branches associated with the 3E excited-state are averaged when operating at room temperature. This study leads to an improved physical understanding of the NV defect electronic structure, which is invaluable for the development of diamond-based quantum information processing.
In this paper, we study the photoinduced switching of the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center between two different charge states - negative (NV-) and neutral (NV0) at liquid helium temperature. The conversion of NV- to NV0 on a single defect is experimentally proven and its rate scales quadratically with power under resonant excitation. In addition, we found that resonant excitation of the neutral NV changes the charge state, recovering its negative configuration. This type of conversion significantly improves spectral stability of NV- defect and allows high fidelity initialization of the spin qubit. A possible mechanism for ionization and recovery of the NV- defect is discussed. This study provides better understanding of the charge dynamics of the NV center, which is relevant for quantum information processing based on NV defect in diamond.
Optical and microwave double resonance techniques are used to obtain the excited state structure of single nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond. The excited state is an orbital doublet and it is shown that it can be split and associated transition strengths varied by external electric fields and by strain. A group theoretical model is developed. It gives a good account of the observations and contributes to an improved understanding of the electronic structure of the center. The findings are important for quantum information processing and other applications of the center.
The negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy (NV-) center in diamond is an attractive candidate for applications that range from magnetometry to quantum information processing. Here we show that only a fraction of the nitrogen (typically < 0.5 %) incorporated during homoepitaxial diamond growth by Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) is in the form of undecorated NV- centers. Furthermore, studies on CVD diamond grown on (110) oriented substrates show a near 100% preferential orientation of NV- centers along only the [111] and [-1-11] directions, rather than the four possible orientations. The results indicate that NV centers grow in as units, as the diamond is deposited, rather than by migration and association of their components. The NV unit of the NVH- is similarly preferentially oriented, but it is not possible to determine whether this defect was formed by H capture at a preferentially aligned NV center or as a complete unit. Reducing the number of NV orientations from 4 orientations to 2 orientations should lead to increased optically-detected magnetic resonance contrast and thus improved magnetic sensitivity in ensemble-based magnetometry.
Silicon-vacancy color centers in nanodiamonds are promising as fluorescent labels for biological applications, with a narrow, non-bleaching emission line at 738,nm. Two-photon excitation of this fluorescence offers the possibility of low-background detection at significant tissue depth with high three-dimensional spatial resolution. We have measured the two-photon fluorescence cross section of a negatively-charged silicon vacancy (SiV$^-$) in ion-implanted bulk diamond to be $0.74(19) times 10^{-50}{rm cm^4;s/photon}$ at an excitation wavelength of 1040,nm. In comparison to the diamond nitrogen vacancy (NV) center, the expected detection threshold of a two-photon excited SiV center is more than an order of magnitude lower, largely due to its much narrower linewidth. We also present measurements of two- and three-photon excitation spectra, finding an increase in the two-photon cross section with decreasing wavelength, and discuss the physical interpretation of the spectra in the context of existing models of the SiV energy-level structure.
We experimentally demonstrate high degree of polarization of 13C nuclear spins weakly interacting with nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond. We combine coherent microwave excitation pulses with optical illumination to provide controlled relaxation and achieve a polarity-tunable, fast nuclear polarization of degree higher than 85% at room temperature for remote 13C nuclear spins exhibiting hyperfine interaction strength with NV centers of the order of 600 kHz. We show with the aid of numerical simulation that the anisotropic hyperfine tensor components naturally provide a route to control spin mixing parameter so that highly efficient nuclear polarization is enabled through careful tuning of nuclear quantization axis by external magnetic field. We further discuss spin dynamics and wide applicability of this method to various target 13C nuclear spins around the NV center electron spin. The proposed control method demonstrates an efficient and versatile route to realize, for example, high-fidelity spin register initialization and quantum metrology using nuclear spin resources in solids.