Spin-to-Charge conversion with electrode confinement in diamond

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel spin-to-charge conversion method in diamond NV centers using electrode confinement and cryogenic temperatures, aiming to enhance optical spin contrast and readout fidelity for quantum applications.

Contribution

It introduces a new spin-to-charge protocol leveraging external electrodes and cryogenic conditions, with theoretical calculations supporting improved contrast and fidelity.

Findings

Theoretical spin contrast of 85% achievable.

Discretization of the diamond conduction band enhances spin readout.

Design guidelines for experimental implementation provided.

Abstract

The nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond has a wide range of potential applications in quantum metrology, communications and computation. The key to its use lies in how large the optical spin contrast is and the associated fidelity of spin state readout. In this paper we propose a new mechanism for improving contrast with a spin-to-charge protocol that relies on the use of an external electrode and cryogenic temperatures to discretize the diamond conduction band for spin-selective resonant photoionization. We use effective mass theory to calculate the discrete eigenenergies in this new system and use them to formulate a new spin-to-charge protocol that involves resonant photoionization out the NV ground state into the diamond conduction band. The major sources of broadening are also addressed which guide the design of the experiment. With this mechanism we theorise an optical spin contrast that and an associated spin readout fidelity of 85%. This significant improvement can be applied to a number of cryogenic quantum technologies.