Violet to Near-Infrared Optical Addressing of Spin Pairs in Hexagonal Boron Nitride

Abstract

Optically addressable solid-state spins are an important platform for practical quantum technologies. Van der Waals material hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) is a promising host as it contains a wide variety of optical emitters, but thus far observations of addressable spins have been sparse, and most of them lacked a demonstration of coherent spin control. Here, robust optical readout of spin pairs in hBN is demonstrated with emission wavelengths spanning from violet to the near-infrared. It is found that these broadband spin pairs exist naturally in a variety of hBN samples from bulk crystals to powders to epitaxial films, and can be coherently controlled across the entire wavelength range. F..