Observation of an environmentally insensitive solid-state spin defect in diamond

Abstract

In search of the right diamond defect Certain defects in diamond are among the most promising physical implementations of qubits, the building blocks of quantum computers. However, identifying a defect with balanced properties is tricky: Nitrogen vacancy centers have a long lifetime but comparatively poor optical properties, whereas negatively charged silicon vacancy centers have the opposite characteristics. Rose et al. used careful materials engineering to stabilize the neutral charge state of silicon vacancy centers and found that they combine long coherence times with excellent optical properties. Science , this issue p. 60