Nitrogen vacancy (NV-) color centers in diamond are a prime candidate for use in quantum information devices, owing to their spin-1 ground state, straightforward optical initialization and readout, and long intrinsic coherence times in a room-temperature solid. While the 13C nuclear spin is often a dominant source of magnetic noise, we observe transitions between electron-nuclear hyperfine states of NV- centers in 99% 13C diamond that are robust to decoherence. At magnetic field strengths ranging from 550 - 900 G, these transitions are observable by optically detected magnetic resonance (ODMR), and exhibit linewidths narrowed by factors as high as ~130 at room temperature over typical electron-type transitions observed from this spin system. We anticipate the use of these decoherence-protected transitions, in combination with dynamical decoupling methods, for storage of quantum information.
@article{arxiv.1506.05484,
title = {Decoherence-protected transitions of nitrogen vacancy centers in 99% 13C-enriched diamond},
author = {Anna J. Parker and Hai-Jing Wang and Yiran Li and Alexander Pines and Jonathan P. King},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1506.05484},
year = {2015}
}