Observation of an environmentally insensitive solid-state spin defect in diamond

We report a color center that shows insensitivity to environmental decoherence caused by phonons and electric field noise: the neutral charge state of silicon vacancy (SiV0). Through careful materials engineering, we achieved >80% conversion of implanted silicon to SiV0. SiV0 exhibits spin-lattice relaxation times approaching 1 minute and coherence times approaching 1 second. Its optical properties are very favorable, with ~90% of its emission into the zero-phonon line and near–transform-limited optical linewidths. These combined properties make SiV0 a promising defect for quantum network applications.

Source: ScienceNOW - July 5, 2018 Category: Science Authors: Rose, B. C., Huang, D., Zhang, Z.-H., Stevenson, P., Tyryshkin, A. M., Sangtawesin, S., Srinivasan, S., Loudin, L., Markham, M. L., Edmonds, A. M., Twitchen, D. J., Lyon, S. A., de Leon, N. P. Tags: Materials Science, Physics reports Source Type: news