We report on quantum emission from Pb-related color centers in diamond following ion implantation and high temperature vacuum annealing. First-principles calculations predict a negatively-charged Pb-vacancy center in a split-vacancy configuration, with a zero-phonon transition around 2.3 eV. Cryogenic photoluminescence measurements performed on emitters in nanofabricated pillars reveal several transitions, including a prominent doublet near 520 nm. The splitting of this doublet, 2 THz, exceeds that reported for other group-IV centers. These observations are consistent with the PbV center, which is expected to have the combination of narrow optical transitions and stable spin states, making it a promising system for quantum network nodes.
@article{arxiv.1805.12202,
title = {Lead-Related Quantum Emitters in Diamond},
author = {Matthew E. Trusheim and Noel H. Wan and Kevin C. Chen and Christopher J. Ciccarino and Ravishankar Sundararaman and Girish Malladi and Eric Bersin and Michael Walsh and Benjamin Lienhard and Hassaram Bakhru and Prineha Narang and Dirk Englund},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1805.12202},
year = {2019}
}