Maze, Jeronimo

Date:  Wednesday, March 15, 2017
Time: 13:30
Place: ETH Zurich, Hönggerberg, HPF G 6
Host:  Christian Degen

joint LFKP and QSIT Seminar

Colour centres as fluorescent markers and their spectral diversity ruled by symmetry

Jeronimo Maze
Pontificia Universidad Catolica, Santiago de Chile

Colour centres in large bandgap materials are leading candidates for a great variety of applications ranging from biophysics to quantum information. Their optical properties and ability to optically control their electronic and spin degrees of freedom is at the core of their potential for metrology. Therefore, understanding their optical properties is crucial for the successful implementation of these applications. In this talk, I will present an example of how the fluorescence stability of nitrogen-vacancy colour centres in diamond can be used for the fluorescent marking of a biological specimen, and also discuss on the large variety of emission spectra that a large bandgap material can host. In particular, we will discuss the cases of the nitrogen-vacancy and the silicon-vacancy colour centres in diamond and show how symmetry rules the interaction between the electronic degrees of freedom and phonons resulting in dramatically different emission spectra even though their atomic configuration differ just by one atom.