Quantum acoustic control of diamond nitrogen-vacancy centers

Here we report on diamond mechanical resonator device engineering and its application to the acoustic control of NV center quantum states. We fabricate high quality diamond bulk acoustic resonators with gigahertz modes and integrated NV centers. Driving the resonator creates direct coupling of phonons to NV center electron spin and orbital states. At room temperature, we observe both single and double quantum spin transitions driven by phonons. Through improved device engineering, we demonstrate efficient acoustic control of NV center spin states using a semi-confocal high over-tone resonator. At cryogenic temperature, we probe the orbital states of a single NV center using photoluminescence excitation (PLE) spectroscopy. We show that the effects of phonon driving are spectroscopically revealed as Autler-Townes splitting and the occurrence of Raman sidebands. Lastly, we discuss how mechanical driving can be leveraged for decoherence protection based on phonon-dressed NV electronic states.

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In collaboration with N. F. Opondo, B. Jiang, E. R. MacQuarrie, R. S. Daveau, S. A. Bhave and G. D. Fuchs.