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Negative charge enhancement of near-surface nitrogen vacancy centers by multicolor excitation

MetadataDetails
Publication Date2018-12-11
JournalPhysical review. B./Physical review. B
AuthorsIdan Meirzada, Yonatan Hovav, S. A. Wolf, Nir Bar‐Gill
InstitutionsHebrew University of Jerusalem
Citations45

Nitrogen-Vacancy (NV) centers in diamond have been identified over the past\nfew years as promising systems for a variety of applications, ranging from\nquantum information science to magnetic sensing. This relies on the unique\noptical and spin properties of the negatively charged NV. Many of these\napplications require shallow NV centers, i.e. NVs that are close (a few nm) to\nthe diamond surface. In recent years there has been increasing interest in\nunderstanding the dynamics of NV centers under various illumination conditions,\nspecifically under infra-red (IR) excitation, which has been demonstrated to\nhave significant impact on the NV centers’ emission and charge state.\nNevertheless, a full understanding of all experimental data is still lacking,\nwith further complications arising from potential differences between the\nphoto-dynamics of bulk vs. shallow NVs. Here we suggest a generalized\nquantitative model for NV center spin and charge state dynamics under both\ngreen and IR excitation. We experimentally extract the relevant transition\nrates, providing a comprehensive model which reconciles all existing results in\nthe literature. Moreover, we identify key differences between the\nphoto-dynamics of bulk and shallow NVs, and use them to significantly enhance\nthe initialization fidelity of shallow NVs to the useful negatively-charged\nstate.\n