Engineering Defects in Diamond

Physics Colloquium 26th February 2016 delivered by Professor Mark Newton Defects in diamond have great potential for use as quantum sensors and qubits1. Full exploitation of their optical and spin properties necessitates that we control their position, orientation and environment to optimise all of the desirable properties simultaneously. In this talk I will review our understanding of the production, in diamond, of intrinsic defect complexes by irradiation and annealing, and the capture of vacancies and self-interstitials by impurities. New Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (EPR) and optical spectroscopic data will be presented on the production of preferentially orientated defect complexes by electron irradiation and/or annealing whilst the sample is subjected to a large (up to 4 GPa) uniaxial stress. Near 100 % preferential orientation can be achieved for a number of different defects. Furthermore, recent results will be presented where uniaxial stress has been used in-situ to investigate both the reorientation and the spin relaxation properties of the single substitutional nitrogen centre (Ns0) in diamond. It will be shown that uniaxial stress can be used to influence spin diffusion and change spin-spin relaxation.

Om Podcasten

The Department of Physics public lecture series. An exciting series of lectures about the research at Oxford Physics take place throughout the academic year. Looking at topics diverse as the creation of the universe to the science of climate change. Features episodes previously published as: (1) 'Oxford Physics Alumni': "Informal interviews with physics alumni at events, lectures and other alumni related activities." (2) 'Physics and Philosophy: Arguments, Experiments and a Few Things in Between': "A series which explores some of the links between physics and philosophy, two of the most fundamental ways with which we try to answer our questions about the world around us. A number of the most pertinent topics which bridge the disciplines are discussed - the nature of space and time, the unpredictable results of quantum mechanics and their surprising consequences and perhaps most fundamentally, the nature of the mind and how far science can go towards explaining and understanding it. Featuring interviews with Dr. Christopher Palmer, Prof. Frank Arntzenius, Prof. Vlatko Vedral, Dr. David Wallace and Prof. Roger Penrose."