Coherent Control of Defect Spins in Silicon Carbide above 550 K

Fei-Fei Yan, Jun-Feng Wang, Qiang Li, Ze-Di Cheng, Jin-Ming Cui, Wen-Zheng Liu, Jin-Shi Xu, Chuan-Feng Li, and Guang-Can Guo

Phys. Rev. Applied 10, 044042 – Published 17 October 2018

Abstract

Great efforts have been made in the investigation of defects in silicon carbide for their attractive optical and spin properties. However, most research is done at low and room temperature. Little is known about the spin-coherence property at high temperature. Here we experimentally demonstrate coherent control of divacancy defect spins in silicon carbide above 550 K. The spin properties of defects from room temperature to 600 K are investigated, and the zero-field splitting is found to have a polynomial temperature dependence and the spin-coherence time decreases as the temperature increases. Moreover, as an example of an application, we demonstrate thermal sensing using the Ramsey method at about 450 K. Our experimental results would be useful for the investigation of high-temperature properties of defect spins and silicon carbide–based broad-temperature-range quantum sensing.

Received 17 May 2018
Revised 9 July 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.10.044042

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Quantum sensing Vacancies

Carbides Semiconductor compounds Solid-state detectors

Coherent control Confocal imaging Optically detected magnetic resonance

Quantum Information, Science & Technology

Authors & Affiliations

Fei-Fei Yan^1,2, Jun-Feng Wang^1,2, Qiang Li^1,2, Ze-Di Cheng^1,2, Jin-Ming Cui^1,2, Wen-Zheng Liu¹, Jin-Shi Xu^1,2,*, Chuan-Feng Li^1,2,†, and Guang-Can Guo^1,2

¹CAS Key Laboratory of Quantum Information, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, People’s Republic of China
²Synergetic Innovation Center of Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, People’s Republic of China

^*jsxu@ustc.edu.cn
^†cfli@ustc.edu.cn

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Vol. 10, Iss. 4 — October 2018

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Images

Figure 1
Experimental setup. (a) The homebuilt confocal microscope system. A laser with a wavelength of 920 nm is modulated by an acousto-optic modulator (AOM). After reflection by a dichroic mirror (DM), laser pulses are focused by an objective to pump the sample. The fluorescence is collected by the same objective and filtered by an interference filter (IF), which is finally detected by a superconducting single photon detector (SSPD). (b) The sample is fixed on a metal ceramic heater and the temperature is detected by a resistive temperature detector (RTD); these are connected to a temperature controller. A ring-shaped antenna is mounted on the sample to implement microwave (MW) pluses. The electrical pulse sequences on the AOM and MW system are controlled by a personal computer (PC).
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Figure 2
Coherent control of spins at room temperature. (a) The ODMR spectrum of divacancy defect spins in $4 H$ - $Si C$ with the increase of magnetic field (upper part) and zero magnetic field (lower part). PL3, PL5, PL6, and PL7 are four types of divacancies. (b) Rabi oscillation of PL5. The blue line represents the theoretical fit with an exponentially decaying sine function. (c) Ramsey fringe of PL5. The decay time shows that the dephasing time $T_{2}^{*}$ is about 1.9 $μ s$ . (d) Thermal-echo oscillation of PL5. The thermal-echo dephasing time $T_{TE}$ is also about 1.9 $μ s$ . The blue lines and insets in (c),(d) are the fits obtained with Eq. (1) and the microwave pulse sequences, respectively.
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Figure 3
Temperature dependence of ODMR signals for PL5. (a) The ODMR spectrum at four representative temperatures. The blue lines are the theoretical Lorentzian fits. (b) The ZFS parameter $D$ as a function of the temperature from 300 to 600 K. The blue line is the theoretical fit with a third-order polynomial. The error bar of every point deduced from the ODMR fitting error is smaller than the corresponding symbol size. (c) The corresponding ODMR contrasts of the right branch of PL5 as a function of the temperature from 300 to 600 K.
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Figure 4
Temperature dependence of coherence-time measurement. (a) The Ramsey oscillations at three different temperatures. (b) The dephasing time $T_{2}^{*}$ versus temperature. (c) The thermal-echo dephasing time $T_{TE}$ versus temperature.
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Figure 5
Thermal-sensing properties at about 450 K. (a) The ZFS parameter $D$ , inferred from the Lorentzian fit to the ODMR data, at about 450 K. The blue line shows the linear fitting. (b) Ramsey oscillation frequency as a function of temperature. The blue line is a linear fitting. The slope of the Ramsey oscillation frequency is consistent with the slope of $D$ as a function of temperature. (c),(d) Ramsey oscillations at two different temperatures show different frequencies. Blue lines are the fittings obtained with Eq. (1). The corresponding oscillation frequencies are shown in (b) as a red circle and a pink rhombus, respectively.
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