Temperature-Dependent Photophysics of Single NV Centers in Diamond

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Temperature-Dependent Photophysics of Single NV Centers in Diamond

Jodok Happacher, Juanita Bocquel, Hossein T. Dinani, Märta A. Tschudin, Patrick Reiser, David A. Broadway, Jeronimo R. Maze, and Patrick Maletinsky

Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 086904 – Published 24 August 2023

Abstract

We present a comprehensive study of the temperature- and magnetic-field-dependent photoluminescence (PL) of individual NV centers in diamond, spanning the temperature-range from cryogenic to ambient conditions. We directly observe the emergence of the NV’s room-temperature effective excited-state structure and provide a clear explanation for a previously poorly understood broad quenching of NV PL at intermediate temperatures around 50 K, as well as the subsequent revival of NV PL. We develop a model based on two-phonon orbital averaging that quantitatively explains all of our findings, including the strong impact that strain has on the temperature dependence of the NV’s PL. These results complete our understanding of orbital averaging in the NV excited state and have significant implications for the fundamental understanding of the NV center and its applications in quantum sensing.

Received 26 January 2023
Revised 26 April 2023
Accepted 14 June 2023

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.086904

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.

Published by the American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Color centers NV centers Point defects

Nitrogen vacancy centers in diamond

Optically detected magnetic resonance

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied PhysicsAtomic, Molecular & OpticalQuantum Information, Science & Technology

Authors & Affiliations

Jodok Happacher¹, Juanita Bocquel ¹, Hossein T. Dinani ², Märta A. Tschudin¹, Patrick Reiser ¹, David A. Broadway¹, Jeronimo R. Maze ³, and Patrick Maletinsky ^1,*

¹Department of Physics, University of Basel, Klingelbergstrasse 82, Basel CH-4056, Switzerland
²Escuela de Ingeniería, Facultad de Ciencias, Ingeniería y Tecnología, Universidad Mayor, Santiago 7500994, Chile
³Facultad de Física, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago 7820436, Chile

^*patrick.maletinksy@unibas.ch

Modeling temperature-dependent population dynamics in the excited state of the nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond

S. Ernst, P. J. Scheidegger, S. Diesch, and C. L. Degen

Phys. Rev. B 108, 085203 (2023)

Temperature Dependence of Photoluminescence Intensity and Spin Contrast in Nitrogen-Vacancy Centers

S. Ernst, P. J. Scheidegger, S. Diesch, L. Lorenzelli, and C. L. Degen

Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 086903 (2023)

Article Text

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Issue

Vol. 131, Iss. 8 — 25 August 2023

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Images

Figure 1
(a) NV level structure for optical spin pumping and spin readout with the excited-state manifold for both low temperatures (top panel) and the orbital averaged room temperature (middle panel). Additionally, the spin singlet and ground state are also shown, which are applicable for both regimes (bottom panel). (b) The excited-state manifold for an NV spin at $T = 2 K$ with relatively low strain $δ_{⊥} = 1.685 \pm 0.003 GHz$ (top panel) and the corresponding experimental NV PL as a function of applied magnetic field (orange) and fit (gray). (c) Same as in (b), but for $T = 300 K$ , for the same low-strain NV. Note that the drop in NV PL occurring at $B_{NV} \approx 100 mT$ corresponds to the ground-state level anticrossing (GSLAC).
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Figure 2
(a) Experimental data of photoluminescence (PL) intensity $I_{PL}$ recorded on a single NV center with “low” strain (strain parameter $δ_{⊥} = 1.685 \pm 0.003 GHz$ ) as a function of temperature $T$ and magnetic field $B_{NV}$ applied along the NV symmetry axis. $I_{PL}$ data are normalized as described in the text. The dotted line is a guide to the eye for which $B_{NV} \propto T^{5}$ , scaled to follow the half-width contour of the $I_{PL}$ dip. Inset: Raw $I_{PL} (T)$ data obtained at $B_{NV} = 0 mT$ , together with a model prediction using the extracted phonon coupling from NV #2 data. (b) Model prediction of $I_{PL} (B_{NV}, T)$ (see text), with relevant NV excited-state level structure (inset). The rate $Γ_{X Y}$ is extracted from fits to NV #2 data, as illustrated in the inset to panel (c). All other NV transition rates are taken from literature [21]. (c) Experimental data as in panel (a), but here taken on a single NV center with “high” strain (strain parameter $δ_{⊥} = 75 \pm 2 GHz$ ). Inset: Raw $I_{PL} (T)$ data obtained at $B_{NV} = 0 mT$ , together with the fit of the model to the raw data. (d) Model prediction, as in panel (b) here, for the “high” strain case. All other rates in the model remain identical. The dip in $I_{PL}$ occurring at $B_{NV} \approx 100 mT$ across all temperatures corresponds to the ground-state level anticrossing (GSLAC).
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Figure 3
Appearance of the room-temperature excited-state level anticrossing (RT-ESLAC) for the NVs with (a) low strain and (b) high strain. The data are offset for clarity. For the low-strain NV, the RT-ESLAC appears only at a significantly higher temperature compared to the high-strain NV. (c) Model prediction of the relative change in $I_{PL} (T, δ_{⊥})$ , evaluated at the RT-ESLAC field for a magnetic field misalignment $θ_{B} = 0.6 °$ (see text and Ref. [21]). Dashed lines mark the position of RT-ESLAC contrast isolines for $θ_{B} = 0.6 °$ in black, with misalignment increments of $\pm 0.1 °$ in gray.
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