We report on pulsed-laser-induced generation of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond facilitated by a solid-immersion lens (SIL). The SIL enables laser writing at energies as low as 5.8 nJ per pulse and allows vacancies to be formed close to a diamond surface without inducing surface graphitization. We operate in the previously unexplored regime, where lattice vacancies are created following tunneling breakdown rather than multiphoton ionization. We present three samples in which NV center arrays were laser-written at distances between ∼1 and 40 μm from a diamond surface, all presenting narrow distributions of optical linewidths with means between 62.1 and 74.5 MHz. The linewidths include the effect of long-term spectral diffusion induced by a 532 nm repump laser for charge-state stabilization, thereby emphasizing the particularly low-charge-noise environment of the created color centers. Such high-quality NV centers are excellent candidates for practical applications employing two-photon quantum interference with separate NV centers. Finally, we propose a model for disentangling power broadening from inhomogeneous broadening in the NV center optical linewidth.

中文翻译：

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使用激光书写和固体浸没透镜创建的钻石中的低电荷噪声氮空位中心

我们报告了由固体浸没透镜 (SIL) 促进的脉冲激光诱导金刚石中氮空位 (NV) 中心的生成。SIL 能够以低至每脉冲 5.8 nJ 的能量进行激光写入，并允许在金刚石表面附近形成空位，而不会引起表面石墨化。我们在以前未探索过的情况下工作，在隧道击穿而不是多光子电离之后产生晶格空位。我们展示了三个样品，其中 NV 中心阵列在距金刚石表面约 1 到 40 μm 的距离处被激光写入，所有样品都呈现出窄的光学线宽分布，均值在 62.1 到 74.5 MHz 之间。线宽包括由 532 nm 再泵浦激光器引起的长期光谱扩散对电荷状态稳定的影响，从而强调所创建的色心的特别低的电荷噪声环境。这种高质量的 NV 中心是采用双光子量子干涉与单独 NV 中心的实际应用的绝佳候选者。最后，我们提出了一个模型，用于从 NV 中心光学线宽的不均匀加宽中解开功率加宽。