Engineering coherent systems is a central goal of quantum science. Color centers in diamond are a promising approach, with the potential to combine the coherence of atoms with the scalability of a solid state platform. However, the solid environment can adversely impact coherence. For example, phonon- mediated spin relaxation can induce spin decoherence, and electric field noise can change the optical transition frequency over time. We report a novel color center with insensitivity to both of these sources of environmental decoherence: the neutral charge state of silicon vacancy (SiV0). Through careful material engineering, we achieve over 80% conversion of implanted silicon to SiV0. SiV0 exhibits excellent spin properties, with spin-lattice relaxation times (T1) approaching one minute and coherence times (T2) approaching one second, as well as excellent optical properties, with approximately 90% of its emission into the zero-phonon line and near-transform limited optical linewidths. These combined properties make SiV0 a promising defect for quantum networks.
@article{arxiv.1706.01555,
title = {Observation of an environmentally insensitive solid state spin defect in diamond},
author = {Brendon C. Rose and Ding Huang and Zi-Huai Zhang and Alexei M. Tyryshkin and Sorawis Sangtawesin and Srikanth Srinivasan and Lorne Loudin and Matthew L. Markham and Andrew M. Edmonds and Daniel J. Twitchen and Stephen A. Lyon and Nathalie P. de Leon},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1706.01555},
year = {2018}
}