Optical Spin Defect Pairs in Cubic Boron Nitride

Abstract

Room-temperature optically active solid-state spin defects are widely known to be useful in quantum sensing applications; however, only a select range of materials have been found to host such systems. Recent measurements in the van der Waals material hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) have shown optically detected magnetic resonance (ODMR) with spin-1/2-like signatures can be explained by a charge-transfer mechanism where charges move between adjacent defects, forming weakly coupled spin pairs. Interestingly, these ODMR signatures have been reported in a variety of materials aside from hBN, suggesting the spin pair model provides a potentially material-agnostic approach for enabling ODMR. Here, ..