Abstract
The advancement of quantum optical science and technology with solid-state emitters such as nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond critically relies on the coherence of the emitters' optical transitions. A widely employed strategy to create NV centers at precisely controlled locations is nitrogen ion implantation followed by a high-temperature annealing process. We report on experimental data directly correlating the NV center optical coherence to the origin of the nitrogen atom. These studies reveal low-strain, narrow-optical-linewidth MHz) NV centers formed from naturally occurring atoms. In contrast, NV centers formed from implanted atoms exhibit significantly broadened optical transitions GHz) and higher strain. The data show that the poor optical coherence of the NV centers formed from implanted nitrogen is not due to an intrinsic effect related to the diamond or isotope. These results have immediate implications for the positioning accuracy of current NV center creation protocols and point to the need to further investigate the influence of lattice damage on the coherence of NV centers from implanted ions.
- Received 23 February 2019
- Corrected 7 May 2019
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.99.161203
©2019 American Physical Society
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
Corrections
7 May 2019
Correction: A production processing flaw rendered the affiliation indicator of the second author in the HTML online version incorrectly. This indicator has been fixed and was set properly without incident in the PDF version.