We report on acoustically driven spin resonances in atomic-scale centers in silicon carbide at room temperature. Specifically, we use a surface acoustic wave cavity to selectively address spin transitions with magnetic quantum number differences of $\pm 1$ and $\pm 2$ in the absence of external microwave electromagnetic fields. These spin-acoustic resonances reveal a nontrivial dependence on the static magnetic field orientation, which is attributed to the intrinsic symmetry of the acoustic fields combined with the peculiar properties of a half-integer spin system. We develop a microscopic model of the spin-acoustic interaction, which describes our experimental data without fitting parameters. Furthermore, we predict that traveling surface waves lead to a chiral spin-acoustic resonance that changes upon magnetic field inversion. These results establish silicon carbide as a highly promising hybrid platform for on-chip spin-optomechanical quantum control enabling engineered interactions at room temperature.

• Received 2 May 2020
• Revised 30 June 2020
• Accepted 6 August 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.107702