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Exploiting ionization dynamics in the nitrogen vacancy center for rapid, high-contrast spin, and charge state initialization

D. Wirtitsch1,2, G. Wachter1, S. Reisenbauer1,3, M. Gulka4,5, V. Ivády6,7,8, F. Jelezko9, A. Gali10,11, M. Nesladek4,12, and M. Trupke1,2,*

  • 1Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology, Department of Physics, University of Vienna, Boltzmanngasse 5, A-1090 Vienna, Austria
  • 2Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) Vienna, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Boltzmanngasse 3, A-1090 Vienna, Austria
  • 3AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH, Giefinggasse 4, A-1210 Vienna, Austria
  • 4Institute for Materials Research, University of Hasselt, Wetenschapspark 1, 3590 Diepenbeek, Belgium
  • 5Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Flemingovo náměstí 2, 166 10 Prague 6, Czech Republic
  • 6Department of Physics of Complex Systems, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Egyetem tér 1-3, H-1053 Budapest, Hungary
  • 7MTA-ELTE Lendület “Momentum” NewQubit Research Group, Pázmány Péter, Sétány 1/A, 1117 Budapest, Hungary
  • 8Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology, Linköping University, 581 83 Linköping, Sweden
  • 9Institute of Quantum Optics, Ulm University, Ulm 89081, Germany
  • 10Institute for Solid State Physics and Optics, Wigner Research Centre for Physics, P.O. Box 49, H-1525 Budapest, Hungary
  • 11Department of Atomic Physics, Institute of Physics, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Műegyetem rakpart 3, H-1111 Budapest, Hungary
  • 12IMOMEC, Division IMEC, Wetenschapspark 1, 3590 Diepenbeek, Belgium

  • *Author to whom correspondence should be addressed: michael.trupke@univie.ac.at
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Phys. Rev. Research 5, 013014 – Published 13 January, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.5.013014

Abstract

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a method to strongly increase the sensitivity of spin measurements on nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers in diamond, which can be readily implemented in existing quantum sensing experiments. While charge state transitions of this defect are generally considered a parasitic effect to be avoided, we show here that these can be used to significantly increase the NV center's spin contrast, a key quantity for high-sensitivity magnetometry and high-fidelity state readout. The protocol consists of a two-step procedure, in which the charge state of the defect is first purified by a strong laser pulse, followed by weak illumination to obtain high spin polarization. We observe a relative improvement of the readout contrast by 17% and infer a reduction of the initialization error of more than 50%. The contrast enhancement is accompanied by a beneficial increase of the readout signal. For long sequence durations, typically encountered in high-resolution magnetometry, a measurement speedup by a factor of >1.5 is extracted, and we find that the technique is beneficial for sequences of any duration. Additionally, our findings give detailed insight into the charge and spin polarization dynamics of the NV center and provide actionable insights for direct optical, spin-to-charge, and electrical readout of solid-state spin centers.

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Phys. Rev. Research 5, 013014– Published 13 January, 2023
  • Received 2 March 2021
  • Accepted 21 November 2022
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