Photo-induced ionization dynamics of the nitrogen vacancy defect in diamond investigated by single-shot charge state detection

By N. Aslam, G. Waldherr, P. Neumann, Fedor Jelezko, J. Wrachtrup. 2012

459 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The nitrogen–vacancy centre (NV) has drawn much attention for over a decade, yet detailed knowledge of the photophysics needs to be established. Under typical conditions, the NV can have two stable charge states, negative (NV−) or neutral (NV0), with photo-induced interconversion of these two states. Here, we present detailed studies of the ionization dynamics of single NV centres in bulk diamond at room temperature during illumination and its dependence on the excitation wavelength and power. We apply a recent method which allows us to directly measure the charge state of a single NV centre, and observe its temporal evolution. We find that the steady-state NV− population is always ⩽75% for 450–610 nm excitation wavelength. In combination with saturation measurements, we show that the optimal excitation wavelength is around 510–540 nm. Furthermore, the relative absorption cross-section of NV− is determined for 540–610 nm, revealing a double-peak structure. Finally, the energy of the NV− ground state of 2.6 eV below the conduction band is measured. These results reveal new insights into the charge state dynamics of the NV centre.

Subfields: Geophysics, Materials Chemistry

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3314c4d18b697ee89ac0c765248d5a2ca88a9ebd

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Geophysics

1. M. Turner
2. J. Schloss
3. J. Barry
4. R. Walsworth
5. C. Hart
6. L. Pham
7. E. Bauch
8. Dirk Englund

In Materials Chemistry

1. M. Turner
2. R. Walsworth
3. C. Hart
4. J. Schloss
5. J. Barry
6. L. Pham
7. Ronald Hanson
8. Daniel J. Twitchen

Citations in the corpus

• Scalable Integration of Long-Lived Quantum Memories into a Photonic Circuit (2014, background): “As we report in the text, the first fabricated iteration of these structures results provide greater than 14 dB of attenuation at 515-nm excitation, a common direct-band-gap laser wavelength,which can be used to efficiently excite theNV [44,45].”
• Sensitivity optimization for NV-diamond magnetometry (2019, background): “Whereas the rate of single-photon ionization scales linearly with optical intensity (Hacquebard and Childress, 2018), two-photon ionization depends quadratically on intensity (Aslam et al., 2013).”
• Deterministic delivery of remote entanglement on a quantum network (2017, background): “The negatively charged NV centre (NV −) can be ionized under optical illumination via a two-photon absorption process [35].”