Color center qubit formation by local electronic excitation*

Color centers e. g. in diamond are promising qubit candidates. Efforts to find color centers with desired properties, e. g. emission in the telecom bands and long coherence times, are limited by the parameter space in which materials can be processed. Recently, color center formation with fs-laser pulses and using swift heavy ions have been reported. Intense pulses of local excitation can drive materials very far from equilibrium follwed by rapid quenching. This extends the parameter range where novel color centers can be formed. We report on mechanisms underlying NV-center formation with swift heavy ions, our search for rare-earth color centers in diamond and new capabilities that we are developing for color center formation far from equilibrium using intense, local pulses of ions and lasers [1-3].
References
[1] K. Nakamura et al., IEEE J. Quant. Electr. 53, 1200121 (2017)
[2] J. J. Barnard, T. Schenkel, J. Appl. Phys. 122, 195901 (2017)
[3] J. Bin et al., Rev. Sci. Instr. 90, 053301 (2019)