Isolation and Control of Spins in Silicon Carbide with Millisecond-Coherence Times

The elimination of defects from silicon carbide (SiC) has facilitated its move to the forefront of the optoelectronics and power-electronics industries. Nonetheless, because the electronic states of SiC defects can have sharp optical and spin transitions, they are increasingly recognized as a valuable resource for quantum-information and nanoscale-sensing applications. We demonstrate that individual electronic spin states of the divacancy defect in highly purified monocrystalline 4H-SiC can be isolated and coherently controlled\footnote{D. J. Christle, A. L. Falk, P. Andrich, P. V. Klimov, J. Hassan, N. T. Son, E. Janz\'{e}n, T. Ohshima, and D. D. Awschalom, Nat. Mater. (to be published)}. This defect has analogous behavior to the prominent nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond, yet exists in a material amenable to modern growth and microfabrication techniques. We spectroscopically identify the different forms of divacancies, and show that divacancy spins exhibit an exceptionally long ensemble Hahn-echo coherence time that exceeds one millisecond.