Nathalie de Leon

Princeton University

"Engineering New Solid State Quantum Defects for Quantum Networks"

 

Nathalie de Leon is an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Princeton University, where she started in 2016. Her group focuses on building quantum technologies with solid state defects and new material systems for superconducting qubits. She received the AFOSR Young Investigator Award in 2016, the Sloan Research Fellowship in 2017, the NSF CAREER Award in 2018, the DARPA Young Faculty Award in 2018, and the DOE Early Career Award in 2018. She is also the Materials Thrust Leader for the Co-design Center for Quantum Advantage, a DOE NQIS Center. She was previously a postdoctoral fellow in the Harvard physics department, jointly supervised by Mikhail Lukin and Hongkun Park. She received her Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry in 2004 from Stanford, working under Richard Zare, and she earned her Ph.D. in chemical physics in 2011 from Harvard in the lab of Hongkun Park.

"Engineering New Solid State Quantum Defects for Quantum Networks”

Engineering coherent systems is a central goal of quantum science and quantum information processing. Point defects in diamond known as color centers are a promising physical platform. Currently-known color centers either exhibit long spin coherence times or efficient, coherent optical transitions, but not both. We have developed new methods to control the diamond Fermi level in order to stabilize a new color center, the neutral charge state of the silicon vacancy (SiV) center. This center exhibits both the excellent optical properties of the negatively charged SiV center and the long spin coherence times of the NV center, making it a promising candidate for applications as a single atom quantum memory for long distance quantum communication. We have recently discovered bound exciton transitions associated with SiV0, which enable efficient optical spin polarization and optically detected magnetic resonance. Finally, I will describe our efforts to integrate SiV0 centers in nanophotonic devices designed to enhance the atom-photon interaction and achieve quantum frequency conversion to the telecom band.