Rydberg excitations of the neutral Silicon Vacancy center in diamond for ODMR detection*

Impurities in diamond is of interest due to their broad range of applicability. The negatively charged silicon vacancy defects [SiV(-)] were demonstrated to form indistinguishable single photon sources in diamond with addressable electron spin. However, milikelvin temperatures are required for actual spin manipulation that limits its applicability. Recently, it has been found that the neutral SiV(0) with S=1 system has a long coherence time and is very promising for quantum communication applications¹. However, the electronic structure of SiV(0) is not yet completely understood. Based on our recent theory^2,3, we employ plane-wave supercell calculations on SiV(0) by means of density functional theory to map the Rydberg-like bound exciton states above the zero phonon optical transition at around 1.41 eV. We show that excitons can localize around SiV(0) that provides 1s, 2s, 2p… Rydberg series. Illumination to these states results in the ODMR detection of SiV(0) spin.
¹R. C. Brendon, et al. Science 361, 6397 (2018)
²G. Thiering, A. Gali, npj Comput Mater 5, 18 (2019)
³G. Thiering, A. Gali, Phys. Rev. X 8, 021063 (2018)