Spin Coherence During Optical Excitation of a Single NV Center in Diamond

Abstract

We examine the quantum spin state of a single nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond at room temperature as it makes a transition from the orbital ground-state (GS) to the orbital excited-state (ES) during non-resonant optical excitation. While the fluorescence read-out of NV-center spins relies on conservation of the longitudinal spin projection during optical excitation, the question of quantum phase preservation has not been examined. Using Ramsey measurements and quantum process tomography, we establish limits on NV center spin decoherence induced during optical excitation. Treating the optical excitation and ES spin precession as a quantum process, we measure a process fidelity of F=0.87\pm0.03, which includes ES spin dephasing during measurement. Extrapolation to the moment of optical excitation yields F\approx0.95. This result demonstrates that ES spin interactions may be used as a resource for quantum control because the quantum spin state can survive incoherent orbital transitions.

12 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (13)

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• Chip-scale nanofabrication of single spins and spin arrays in diamond
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• Observation of the dynamic Jahn-Teller effect in the excited states of nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond
• Polarization and readout of coupled single spins in diamond
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• Quantum process tomography and Linblad estimation of a solid state qubit
• Decoherence due to elastic Rayleigh scattering
• Bootstrap tomography of high-precision pulses for quantum control

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• Cooling a Mechanical Resonator with a Nitrogen-Vacancy Center Ensemble Using a Room Temperature Excited State Spin-Strain Interaction
• Excited-state spin-resonance spectroscopy of V${}_{\text{B}}^{-}$ defect centers in hexagonal boron nitride
• Spatiotemporal Mapping of Photocurrent in a Monolayer Semiconductor Using a Diamond Quantum Sensor
• Full alignment of colloidal objects by programmed forcing
• Theory of nuclear spin dephasing and relaxation by optically illuminated nitrogen-vancy center
• Fast coherent control of nitrogen-14 spins associated with nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamonds using dynamical decoupling