Coherent manipulation of nitrogen vacancy centers in 4H silicon carbide with resonant excitation

Silicon carbide (SiC) has become a key player in realization of scalable quantum technologies due to its ability to host optically addressable spin qubits and wafer-size samples. Here, we have demonstrated optically detected magnetic resonance (ODMR) with resonant excitation, and clearly identified the ground state energy levels of the NV centers in 4H-SiC. Coherent manipulation of NV centers in SiC has been achieved with Rabi and Ramsey oscillations. Finally, we show the successful generation and characterization of single nitrogen vacancy (NV) center in SiC employing ion implantation. Our results are highlighting the key role of NV centers in SiC as a potential candidate for quantum information processing

Nitrogen impurities and fluorescent NVcenters in detonation nanodiamonds: identification and distinct features

International audienceWe show that nitrogen is the main impurity contained in detonation nano-diamonds (DNDs), at a concentration of ~16000 ppm. The content of nitrogen-vacancy (NV-) centers in these DNDs is ~2.7 ppm, which is the largest of all known types of nano-diamonds of size <10 nm with artificially created NVcenters. The removal of graphite-like fragments from the DND surface allowed us to detect the characteristic photoluminescence (PL) of the NVcolor centers in individual DND aggregates of sizes from 50-100 to 500-700 nm. We have further confirmed the detection of the negatively charged NVthrough the observation of a strong decrease in the PL intensity when an external magnetic field is applied. Such an effect results from the optically detectable magnetic resonance of the electronic spin triplet ground state of NV-, that cannot be observed in other emitting defects, in a similar spectral range, including the neutral NV 0 centers