Systematic study of correlation between spectral diffusion, strain, and depth from surface in nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond

Single nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond are useful as a spin-photon interface for quantum networking, owing to their long spin lifetimes and sharp optical transitions at low temperature. Quantum networking schemes aimed at entangling two or more NV centers suffer from two challenges: first, there is a defect-to-defect variation of optical transition frequency, and second, there is spectral diffusion of individual NV centers transition frequency caused by fluctuations in the local electromagnetic trap environment. In this presentation I will describe our systematic study of spectral diffusion in NV centers within bulk diamond. For each NV center we quantify the spectral diffusion and the static strain, describing each in terms of the components of a given Jahn-Teller symmetry. We investigate how the different components of spectral diffusion correlate with one another, with static strain, and with depth from the diamond surface.