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Register a new userIsolated electron spins in silicon carbide with millisecond-coherence times
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The elimination of defects from SiC has facilitated its move to the forefront of the optoelectronics and power-electronics industries. Nonetheless, because the electronic states of SiC defects can have sharp optical and spin transitions, they are increasingly recognized as a valuable resource for quantum-information and nanoscale-sensing applications. Here, we show that individual electron spin states in highly purified monocrystalline 4H-SiC can be isolated and coherently controlled. Bound to neutral divacancy defects, these states exhibit exceptionally long ensemble Hahn-echo spin coherence, exceeding 1 ms. Coherent control of single spins in a material amenable to advanced growth and microfabrication techniques is an exciting route to wafer-scale quantum technologies.
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Divacancy defects in silicon carbide have long-lived electronic spin states and sharp optical transitions, with properties that are similar to the nitrogen-vacancy defect in diamond. We report experiments on 4H-SiC that investigate all-optical addressing of spin states with the zero-phonon-line transitions. Our magneto-spectroscopy results identify the spin $S=1$ structure of the ground and excited state, and a role for decay via intersystem crossing. We use these results for demonstrating coherent population trapping of spin states with divacancy ensembles that have particular orientations in the SiC crystal.
We demonstrate that the spin of optically addressable point defects can be coherently driven with AC electric fields. Based on magnetic-dipole forbidden spin transitions, this scheme enables spatially confined spin control, the imaging of high-frequency electric fields, and the characterization of defect spin multiplicity. While we control defects in SiC, these methods apply to spin systems in many semiconductors, including the nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond. Electrically driven spin resonance offers a viable route towards scalable quantum control of electron spins in a dense array.
Colour centres with long-lived spins are established platforms for quantum sensing and quantum information applications. Colour centres exist in different charge states, each of them with distinct optical and spin properties. Application to quantum technology requires the capability to access and stabilize charge states for each specific task. Here, we investigate charge state manipulation of individual silicon vacancies in silicon carbide, a system which has recently shown a unique combination of long spin coherence time and ultrastable spin-selective optical transitions. In particular, we demonstrate charge state switching through the bias applied to the colour centre in an integrated silicon carbide opto-electronic device. We show that the electronic environment defined by the doping profile and the distribution of other defects in the device plays a key role for charge state control. Our experimental results and numerical modeling evidence that control of these complex interactions can, under certain conditions, enhance the photon emission rate. These findings open the way for deterministic control over the charge state of spin-active colour centres for quantum technology and provide novel techniques for monitoring doping profiles and voltage sensing in microscopic devices.
Spin defects in silicon carbide (SiC) with mature wafer-scale fabrication and micro/nano-processing technologies have recently drawn considerable attention. Although room temperature single-spin manipulation of colour centres in SiC has been demonstrated, the typically detected contrast is less than 2%, and the photon count rate is also low. Here, we present the coherent manipulation of single divacancy spins in 4H-SiC with a high readout contrast (-30%) and a high photon count rate (150 kilo counts per second) under ambient conditions, which are competitive with the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centres in diamond. Coupling between a single defect spin and a nearby nuclear spin is also observed. We further provide a theoretical explanation for the high readout contrast by analysing the defect levels and decay paths. Since the high readout contrast is of utmost importance in many applications of quantum technologies, this work might open a new territory for SiC-based quantum devices with many advanced properties of the host material.
Long coherence times are key to the performance of quantum bits (qubits). Here, we experimentally and theoretically show that the Hahn-echo coherence time (T2) of electron spins associated with divacancy defects in 4H-SiC reaches 1.3 ms, one of the longest T2 times of an electron spin in a naturally isotopic crystal. Using a first-principles microscopic quantum-bath model, we find that two factors determine the unusually robust coherence. First, in the presence of moderate magnetic fields (300 G and above), the 29Si and 13C paramagnetic nuclear spin baths are decoupled. In addition, because SiC is a binary crystal, homo-nuclear spin pairs are both diluted and forbidden from forming strongly coupled, nearest-neighbor spin pairs. Longer neighbor distances result in fewer nuclear spin flip-flops, a less fluctuating intra-crystalline magnetic environment, and thus a longer T2 time. Our results point to polyatomic crystals as promising hosts for coherent qubits in the solid state.
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