Defects in SiC: Electronic structure, spin control, and spin-photon interfaces

Sophia Economou
Virginia Tech

Color center defects in solids are attractive candidates for quantum information processing. The most well-known example is the NV center in diamond; remote heralded entanglement has been demonstrated between two NV centers, and a few-qubit quantum processor based on a single center and its neighboring nuclear spins has also been developed. Despite its many successes, there are challenges with this defect. As a result, the community is in the quest for alternative defects with desirable properties. Silicon carbide (SiC) has emerged as a technologically viable material for quantum technologies. It hosts defects that can be exploited both for spin-based and photonics applications. I will present our work on the silicon vacancy defect in SiC, including electronic structure of the multi-electron spin states, as well as spin polarization and control. These results enable the design of spin-photon interfaces that can be used to generate highly entangled ‘graph’ states of photons, which are crucial for applications in quantum computation, communication, and sensing.


Back to Quantum Computing Materials Challenges