Isolated Spin Qubits in SiC with a High-Fidelity Infrared Spin-to-Photon Interface

• Published in: Physical review. X Vol. 7; no. 2; p. 021046
• Main Authors: Christle, David J., Klimov, Paul V., de las Casas, Charles F., Szász, Krisztián, Ivády, Viktor, Jokubavicius, Valdas, Ul Hassan, Jawad, Syväjärvi, Mikael, Koehl, William F., Ohshima, Takeshi, Son, Nguyen T., Janzén, Erik, Gali, Ádám, Awschalom, David D.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: College Park American Physical Society 23-06-2017
• Subjects: Accuracy; CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSICS; color centers; Defects; Divacancies; Electron spin; Laser cooling; MATERIALS SCIENCE; Microwaves; Phase coherence; Photons; quantum control; Quantum entanglement; quantum information with solid state qubits; Quantum phenomena; Qubits (quantum computing); Silicon carbide; spintronics; Telecommunications; Thin films; Wavelengths
• ISSN: 2160-3308; 2160-3308
• DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevX.7.021046

The divacancies in SiC are a family of paramagnetic defects that show promise for quantum communication technologies due to their long-lived electron spin coherence and their optical addressability at near-telecom wavelengths. Nonetheless, a high-fidelity spin-photon interface, which is a crucial prerequisite for such technologies, has not yet been demonstrated. Here, we demonstrate that such an interface exists in isolated divacancies in epitaxial films of 3C-SiC and 4H-SiC. Our data show that divacancies in 4H-SiC have minimal undesirable spin mixing, and that the optical linewidths in our current sample are already similar to those of recent remote entanglement demonstrations in other systems. Moreover, we find that 3C-SiC divacancies have a millisecond Hahn-echo spin coherence time, which is among the longest measured in a naturally isotopic solid. The presence of defects with these properties in a commercial semiconductor that can be heteroepitaxially grown as a thin film on Si shows promise for future quantum networks based on SiC defects.