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Charge State Equilibration of Nitrogen-Vacancy Center Ensembles in Diamond: The Role of Electron Tunneling

Audrius Alkauskas1,*, Chris G. Van de Walle2, Lukas Razinkovas1,†, and Ronald Ulbricht3,‡

  • *Deceased.
  • †Contact author: lukas.razinkovas@ftmc.lt
  • ‡Contact author: ulbricht@mpip-mainz.mpg.de
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 136401 – Published 22 September, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/l3yf-k48t

Abstract

The charge state stability of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers critically affects their application as quantum sensors and qubits. Understanding charge state conversion and equilibration is important not only for NV centers in diamond but also for defects and impurities in wide-bandgap materials in general. The mechanisms by which these centers change charge state upon optical or electronic excitation without the presence of mobile carriers remain unclear. Here, we elucidate this issue for the case of photoionization of NV center ensembles. Using pump-probe spectroscopy, we ionize negatively charged NV centers and monitor the recovery of NV− on timescales of up to several seconds. We find that the recovery rate depends strongly on the concentration of surrounding nitrogen donors. Remarkably, the equilibration dynamics exhibit no discernible dependence on temperature, ruling out thermally activated processes. We develop a multiphonon-assisted electron-tunneling model, supported by density-functional calculations, that explains the measurements and identifies tunneling as the equilibration mechanism. Because tunneling rates depend exponentially on donor separation, the random distribution of nitrogen donors spreads recovery times from nanoseconds to hours or longer.

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 136401– Published 22 September, 2026
  • Received 10 December 2025
  • Accepted 8 September 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Open access publication funded by the Max Planck Society.

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