Investigating the initialization and readout of relative populations of NV− and NV0 defects in diamond

Abstract

The static electric dipole–dipole coupling between donor–acceptor pairs (DAPs) in wide-bandgap semiconductors has recently emerged as a means of realizing a quantum science platform through optically controllable, long-range interactions between defects in the solid state. In this work, we generalize DAPs to consider arbitrary dopant populations and demonstrate that the charge of the NV center in diamond is well suited for quantum science. Explicitly, we leverage experimental results [see Z. Yuan et al., PRR 2, 033263 (2020)] to show that shallow NV centers can be efficiently initialized to a given relative population of the negative and neutral charge states and that modulating the surface termination would allow for control of the timescale over which the initialization and subsequent computations would occur. Furthermore, we argue that the observation of electroluminescence from the neutral charge state of the NV center [see N. Mizuochi et al., Nat. Photon. 6, 299 (2012)], but not from the negative charge state, implies the ability to interface with the NV center’s charge in a manner analogous to the spin interface enabled by the spin-state dependent fluorescence of the NV center.