Photoluminescence excitation and spectral hole burning spectroscopy of silicon vacancy centers in diamond

Abstract

Silicon-vacancy (SiV) centers in diamond are promising systems for quantum information applications due to their bright single photon emission and optically accessible spin states. Furthermore, SiV centers in low-strain diamond are insensitive to pertubations of the dielectric environment, i.e. they show very weak spectral diffusion. This property renders ensembles of SiV centers interesting for sensing applications. We here report on photoluminescence excitation (PLE) spectroscopy on an SiV ensemble in a low strain, CVD-grown high quality diamond layer, where we measure the fine structure with high resolution and obtain the linewidths and splittings of the SiV centers. We investigate the temperature dependence of the width and position of the fine structure peaks. Our measurements reveal linewidths of about 10 GHz as compared to a lifetime limited width on the order of 0.1 GHz. This difference arises from the inhomogeneous broadening of the transitions caused by residual strain. To overcome inhomogeneous broadening we use spectral hole burning spectroscopy which enables us to measure a nearly lifetime limited homogeneous linewidth of 279 MHz. Furthermore, we demonstrate evidence of coherent interaction in the system by driving a $\Lambda$-scheme. Additional measurements on single emitters created by ion implantation confirm the homogeneous linewidths seen in the spectral hole burning experiments and relate the ground state splitting to the decoherence rate.

8 pages, 10 figures

References in corpus (5)

• High-sensitivity diamond magnetometer with nanoscale resolution
• All-optical initialization, readout, and coherent preparation of single silicon-vacancy spins in diamond
• Electron-phonon processes of the silicon-vacancy centre in diamond
• Low temperature investigations of single silicon vacancy colour centres in diamond
• All-optical formation of coherent dark states of silicon-vacancy spins in diamond

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Coherent control of the silicon-vacancy spin in diamond
• Ultrafast, all-optical coherent control of single silicon vacancy colour centres in diamond
• Spectroscopic Investigations of Negatively Charged Tin-Vacancy Centres in Diamond
• Cavity-enhanced single photon source based on the silicon vacancy center in diamond
• Strongly inhomogeneous distribution of spectral properties of silicon-vacancy color centers in nanodiamonds
• Coherence properties and quantum control of silicon vacancy color centers in diamond
• Coherent control and wave mixing in an ensemble of silicon vacancy centers in diamond
• Hidden Silicon-Vacancy Centers in Diamond
• Recovering the homogeneous absorption of inhomogeneous media
• Single crystal diamond membranes containing germanium vacancy color centers
• Sub-GHz linewidths ensembles of SiV centers in a diamond nano-pyramid revealed by charge state conversion