Control and coherence of the optical transition of single defect centers in diamond

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates coherent optical control of single Nitrogen-Vacancy centers in diamond, achieving rapid Rabi oscillations and overcoming spectral diffusion to generate coherent photons, advancing quantum information applications.

Contribution

It introduces methods to control and mitigate spectral diffusion in NV centers, enabling coherent photon generation with fast optical Rabi oscillations.

Findings

Optical Rabi oscillations with 1 ns half-period observed

Decoherence mainly caused by laser-induced spectral jumps

Spectral diffusion can be mitigated using post-selection techniques

Abstract

We demonstrate coherent control of the optical transition of single Nitrogen-Vacancy defect centers in diamond. On applying short resonant laser pulses, we observe optical Rabi oscillations with a half-period as short as 1 nanosecond, an order of magnitude shorter than the spontaneous emission time. By studying the decay of Rabi oscillations, we find that the decoherence is dominated by laser-induced spectral jumps. By using a low-power probe pulse as a detuning sensor and applying post-selection, we demonstrate that spectral diffusion can be overcome in this system to generate coherent photons.