No Arabic abstract
Initializing quantum registers with high fidelity is a fundamental precondition for many applications like quantum information processing and sensing. The electronic and nuclear spins of a Nitrogen-Vacancy (NV) center in diamond form an interesting hybrid quantum register that can be initialized by a combination of laser, microwave, and radio-frequency pulses. However, the laser illumination, which is necessary for achieving electron spin polarization, also has the unwanted side-effect of depolarizing the nuclear spin. Here, we study how the depolarization dynamics of the $^{14}$N nuclear spin depends on the laser wavelength. We show experimentally that excitation with an orange laser (594 nm) causes significantly less nuclear spin depolarization compared to the green laser (532 nm) typically used for excitation and hence leads to higher nuclear spin polarization. This could be because orange light excitation inhibits ionization of NV$^{0}$ into NV$^{-}$ and therefore suppresses one source of noise acting on the nuclear spin.
We present a scheme to generate entangled photons using the NV centers in diamond. We show how the long-lived nuclear spin in diamond can mediate entanglement between multiple photons thereby increasing the length of entangled photon string. With the proposed scheme one could generate both n-photon GHZ and cluster states. We present an experimental scheme realizing the same and estimating the rate of entanglement generation both in the presence and absence of a cavity.
Integrating atomic quantum memories based on color centers in diamond with on-chip photonic devices would enable entanglement distribution over long distances. However, efforts towards integration have been challenging because color centers can be highly sensitive to their environment, and their properties degrade in nanofabricated structures. Here, we describe a heterogeneously integrated, on-chip, III-V diamond platform designed for neutral silicon vacancy (SiV0) centers in diamond that circumvents the need for etching the diamond substrate. Through evanescent coupling to SiV0 centers near the surface of diamond, the platform will enable Purcell enhancement of SiV0 emission and efficient frequency conversion to the telecommunication C-band. The proposed structures can be realized with readily available fabrication techniques.
A common impediment to qubit performance is imperfect state initialization. In the case of the diamond nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center, the initialization fidelity is limited by fluctuations in the defects charge state during optical pumping. Here, we use real-time control to deterministically initialize the NV centers charge state at room temperature. We demonstrate a maximum charge initialization fidelity of 99.4$pm$0.1% and present a quantitative model of the initialization process that allows for systems-level optimization of the spin-readout signal-to-noise ratio. Even accounting for the overhead associated with the initialization sequence, increasing the charge initialization fidelity from the steady-state value of 75% near to unity allows for a factor-of-two speedup in experiments while maintaining the same signal-to-noise-ratio. In combination with high-fidelity readout based on spin-to-charge conversion, real-time initialization enables a factor-of-20 speedup over traditional methods, resulting in an ac magnetic sensitivity of 1.3 nT/Hz$^{1/2}$ for our single NV-center spin. The real-time control method is immediately beneficial for quantum sensing applications with NV centers as well as probing charge-dependent physics, and it will facilitate protocols for quantum feedback control over multi-qubit systems.
We investigated the depth dependence of coherence times of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers through precisely depth controlling by a moderately oxidative at 580{deg}C in air. By successive nanoscale etching, NV centers could be brought close to the diamond surface step by step, which enable us to trace the evolution of the number of NV centers remained in the chip and to study the depth dependence of coherence times of NV centers with the diamond etching. Our results showed that the coherence times of NV centers declined rapidly with the depth reduction in their last about 22 nm before they finally disappeared, revealing a critical depth for the influence of rapid fluctuating surface spin bath. By monitoring the coherence time variation with depth, we could make a shallow NV center with long coherence time for detecting external spins with high sensitivity.
Nuclear spins nearby nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond are excellent quantum memory for quantum computing and quantum sensing, but are difficult to be initialized due to their weak interactions with the environment. Here we propose and demonstrate a magnetic-field-independent, deterministic and highly efficient polarization scheme by introducing chopped laser pulses into the double-resonance initialization method. With this method, we demonstrate initialization of single-nuclear-spin approaching $98.1%$ and a $^{14}N$-$^{13}C$ double-nuclear-spin system approaching $96.8%$ at room temperature. The initialization is limited by a nuclear-spin depolarization effect due to chopped laser excitation. Our approach could be extended to NV systems with more nuclear spins and would be a useful tool in future applications such as nano-MRI and single-cell NMR.