State-dependent phonon-limited spin relaxation of nitrogen-vacancy centers

Abstract

Understanding the limits to the spin-coherence of the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond is vital to realizing the full potential of this quantum system. We show that relaxation on the $|m_s=-1⟩\leftrightarrow |m_s=+1⟩$ transition occurs approximately twice as fast as relaxation on the $|m_s=0⟩\leftrightarrow |m_s=\pm 1⟩$ transitions under ambient conditions in native NVs in high-purity bulk diamond. The rates we observe are independent of NV concentration over four orders of magnitude, indicating they are limited by spin-phonon interactions. We find that the maximum theoretically achievable coherence time for an NV at 295 K is limited to 6.8(2) ms. Finally, we present a theoretical analysis of our results that suggests Orbach-like relaxation from quasilocalized phonons or contributions due to higher-order terms in the spin-phonon Hamiltonian are the dominant mechanism behind $|m_s=-1⟩\leftrightarrow |m_s=+1⟩$ relaxation, motivating future measurements of the temperature dependence of this relaxation rate.

Main text: 7 pages, 4 figures, 31 references. Supplemental materials: 12 pages, 1 table, 1 figure

References in corpus (9)

• High-sensitivity diamond magnetometer with nanoscale resolution
• Scalable quantum register based on coupled electron spins in a room temperature solid
• Dynamic strain-mediated coupling of a single diamond spin to a mechanical resonator
• Resolved sidebands in a strain-coupled hybrid spin-oscillator system
• First-principles theory of the luminescence lineshape for the triplet transition in diamond NV centre
• Quenching Spin Decoherence in Diamond through Spin Bath Polarization
• Dynamical Decoupling of a single electron spin at room temperature
• Multipulse Double-Quantum Magnetometry With Near-Surface Nitrogen Vacancy Centers
• Thermalization of strongly interacting bosons after spontaneous emissions in optical lattices

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Temperature-dependent spin-lattice relaxation of the nitrogen-vacancy spin triplet in diamond
• Phonon engineering of atomic-scale defects in superconducting quantum circuits
• Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics Effects with Nitrogen Vacancy Center Spins in Diamond and Microwave Resonators at Room Temperature
• Protecting Quantum Information via Destructive Interference of Correlated Noise
• Performance of quantum registers in diamond in the presence of spin impurities
• Engineering non-Markovianity from defect-phonon interactions
• Spin-Phonon Relaxation of Boron-Vacancy Centers in Two-Dimensional Boron Nitride Polytypes