Microscopic study of optically-stable, coherent color centers in diamond generated by high-temperature annealing

Abstract

Single color centers in solid have emerged as promising physical platforms for quantum information science. Creating these centers with excellent quantum properties is a key foundation for further technological developments. In particular, the microscopic understanding of the spin bath environments is the key to engineer color centers for quantum control. In this work, we propose and demonstrate a distinct high-temperature annealing (HTA) approach for creating high-quality nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers in implantation-free diamonds. Simultaneously using the created NV centers as probes for their local environment we verify that no damage was microscopically induced by the HTA. Nearly all single NV centers created in ultra-low-nitrogen-concentration membranes possess stable and Fourier-transform-limited optical spectra. Furthermore, HTA strongly reduces noise sources naturally grown in ensemble samples, and leads to more than three-fold improvements of decoherence time and sensitivity. We also verify that the vacancy activation and defect reformation, especially H3 and P1 centers, can explain the reconfiguration between spin baths and color centers. This novel approach will become a powerful tool in vacancy-based quantum technology.

References in corpus (22)

• Quantum sensing
• The nitrogen-vacancy colour centre in diamond
• Sensitivity Optimization for NV-Diamond Magnetometry
• Heralded entanglement between solid-state qubits separated by 3 meters
• High-fidelity projective readout of a solid-state spin quantum register
• A 10-qubit solid-state spin register with quantum memory up to one minute
• Laser writing of coherent colour centres in diamond
• Atomic-scale imaging of a 27-nuclear-spin cluster using a single-spin quantum sensor
• Generation of single colour centers by focussed nitrogen implantation
• Decoherence of dipolar spin ensembles in diamond
• The negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy centre in diamond: the electronic solution
• Conversion of neutral nitrogen-vacancy centers to negatively-charged nitrogen-vacancy centers through selective oxidation
• High fidelity transfer and storage of photon states in a single nuclear spin
• Increasing the coherence time of single electron spins in diamond by high temperature annealing
• Quantum sensing of local magnetic field texture in strongly correlated electron systems under extreme conditions
• Optically coherent nitrogen-vacancy centers in μm-thin etched diamond membranes
• Spin decoherence and electron spin bath noise of a nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond
• Optically Enhanced Electric Field Sensing Using Nitrogen-Vacancy Ensembles
• Low charge-noise nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond created using laser writing with a solid-immersion lens
• A window into NV center kinetics via repeated annealing and spatial tracking of thousands of individual NV centers
• Determination of local defect density in diamond by double electron-electron resonance
• High temperature annealing enhanced diamond 13C hyperpolarization at room temperature

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Diamond Integrated Quantum Photonics: A Review
• Optically Coherent Nitrogen-Vacancy Centers in HPHT Treated Diamonds
• Quantum decoherence of nitrogen-vacancy spin ensembles in a nitrogen spin bath in diamond under dynamical decoupling
• Engineering Nanodiamonds for Quantum Sensing: Material Constraints at the Nanoscale
• Saturable absorption in defect-rich diamond nanophotonics