Strain engineering of the silicon-vacancy center in diamond

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates control over the electronic and spin properties of silicon-vacancy centers in diamond through strain engineering, enabling precise tuning for quantum network applications.

Contribution

It introduces a method to deterministically tune SiV centers' optical and spin transitions via nano-electro-mechanical strain control, revealing large strain susceptibilities.

Findings

Achieved wide-range tuning of SiV optical and spin transitions.

Revealed large strain susceptibilities of electronic and spin states.

Proposed strong coupling of SiV spin to nanomechanical resonators.

Abstract

We control the electronic structure of the silicon-vacancy (SiV) color-center in diamond by changing its static strain environment with a nano-electro-mechanical system. This allows deterministic and local tuning of SiV optical and spin transition frequencies over a wide range, an essential step towards multi-qubit networks. In the process, we infer the strain Hamiltonian of the SiV revealing large strain susceptibilities of order 1 PHz/strain for the electronic orbital states. We identify regimes where the spin-orbit interaction results in a large strain suseptibility of order 100 THz/strain for spin transitions, and propose an experiment where the SiV spin is strongly coupled to a nanomechanical resonator.