Welcome to the de Leon Group
The de Leon lab is focused on building quantum technologies and using quantum metrology to advance science. We work on two main platforms. First, we use color centers in diamond and other wide bandgap materials as solid-state atom-like systems that can be harnessed for quantum sensing and quantum communication. One major area of focus is developing nitrogen vacancy centers in diamond as quantum sensors for studying materials and condensed matter physics. Second, we develop new material platforms and devices based on superconducting qubits and circuits. We are particularly interested in understanding the fundamental nature of noise and loss in these systems to enable next-generation quantum processors. Our group is highly interdisciplinary, and our work spans optics and nanophotonics, surface science and materials spectroscopy, atomic physics, condensed matter physics, nanofabrication, optoelectronics, magnetic resonance, and cryogenics.
We collaborate broadly, and benefit from a large research community focused on quantum science and engineering at Princeton:
March 6, 2025
Our paper demonstrating noble metal encapsulation of superconducting circuits was selected as an Editors' Suggestion in PRL:
https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.134.097001
December 2, 2024
Alex Abulnaga successfully defended his thesis, "Hybrid nanophotonics for quantum nodes based on defects in diamond." Congratulations Dr. Abulnaga!
November 26, 2024
Our paper showing that robustness to fabrication error is an important ingredient for hybrid photonic crystal cavities is out in Nanophotonics:
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/nanoph-2024-0500/html
November 12, 2024
Congratulations to Lila Nassar for getting a PCCM poster prize!
November 11, 2024
Our invited review on nanoscale diamond quantum sensors for many-body physics is out at Nature Reviews Physics:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42254-024-00775-4
This review is the culmination of many months of work together with Sarang Gopalakrishnan, Eugene Demler, Ania Jayich, and Patrick Maletinsky, and it lays out some directions that we are particularly excited about for condensed matter sensing.
September 17, 2024
Congratulations to Zeeshawn Kazi for being awarded an IC Postdoctoral Fellowship!
May 28, 2024
Congratulations to Lila Rodgers for earning the Bede Liu Best Dissertation Award!
April 12, 2024
Congratulations to Izze Hedrick for being awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship!
March 7, 2024
Our collaborative work with the Knowles group using hydrogen atom transfer to functionalize diamond surfaces is out in PNAS:
October 7, 2023
Our collaborative work with the Houck and Cava groups on understanding losses in tantalum superconducting circuits is out in PRX:
https://journals.aps.org/prx/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevX.13.041005
August 30, 2023
Our collaborative work with the Thompson and Cava groups demonstrating indistinguishable telecom band photon emission from single Er ions is out in Nature:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06281-4
News coverage:
https://engineering.princeton.edu/news/2023/08/30/simpler-way-connect-quantum-computers
August 24, 2023
Congratulations to Jared Rovny for being awarded an IC Postdoctoral Fellowship!
July 14, 2023
Congratulations to Sounak Mukherjee for getting the Best Oral Presentation Award at the 2023 De Beers Diamond Research Conference for his talk entitled, "A Telecom O-band Emitter in Diamond"
June 12, 2023
Lila Rodgers successfully defended her thesis, "Engineering Highly Coherent Qubits by Correlating Surface Spectroscopy with Quantum Measurement." Congratulations, Dr. Rodgers!
May 31, 2023
Our paper, "Chemical Profiles of the Oxides on Tantalum in State of the Art Superconducting Circuits," in collaboration with BNL, the Houck group, and the Cava group is out in Advanced Science:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/advs.202300921
News coverage:
May 15, 2023
Elisabeth Rulke's senior thesis is featured on the Princeton homepage!
April 21, 2023
Our paper, "Neutral Silicon Vacancy Centers in Undoped Diamond via Surface Control," in collaboration with Patrick Maletinsky is out in PRL:
https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.166902
March 29, 2023
Our paper reporting a new color center in diamond in the telecom O-band, in collaboration with Philipp Reineck, Alastair Stacey, and Greg Scholes is out in Nano Letters:
March 7, 2023
We have two new papers on charge dynamics of silicon vacancy centers. "Neutral silicon vacancy centers in diamond via photoactivated itinerant carriers" is out in Phys Rev Applied:
https://journals.aps.org/prapplied/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.19.034022
and collaborative work with Carlos Meriles and Alex Wood, "Room-temperature photo-chromism of silicon vacancy centers in CVD diamond" is out in Nano Letters:
February 6, 2023
Our paper, "Probing itinerant carrier dynamics at the diamond surface using single nitrogen vacancy centers," is out in APL:
December 22, 2022
Our paper, "Nanoscale covariance magnetometry with diamond quantum sensors," is out in Science:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade9858
News coverage:
December 14, 2022
Our paper, "Probing Spin Dynamics on Diamond Surfaces Using a Single Quantum Sensor," is out in PRX Quantum:
https://journals.aps.org/prxquantum/abstract/10.1103/PRXQuantum.3.040328
News coverage:
https://physics.aps.org/articles/v16/1
October 26, 2022
Zihuai Zhang successfully defended his thesis, " Engineering Quantum Defects in Diamond for Quantum Networks." Congratulations, Dr. Zhang!
May 15, 2022
Lila Rodgers was awarded the Peter Ogden Jacobus Fellowship, the highest honor at the Graduate School. Congratulations, Lila!
February 22, 2022
Our collaborative work with the Maurer group at UChicago is in PNAS:
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2114186119
News coverage:
December 8, 2021
Congratulations to Lila Rodgers for being recognized with a SEAS Award for Excellence!
September 13, 2021
We are starting an exciting new collaboration with the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory on diamond growth for quantum sensors.
News coverage:
July 28, 2021
Ding Huang successfully defended his thesis entitled, "Building quantum network nodes based on neutral silicon vacancy centers in diamond." Congratulations, Dr. Huang!
July 9, 2021
Congratulations to Lila Rodgers for getting a poster award at the 2021 De Beers Diamond Research Conference for her poster entitled, "Engineering coherent shallow nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond under functionalized surfaces for biosensing experiments"
April 15, 2021
Our review paper on materials challenges in quantum computing is out in Science
March 23, 2021
Trisha Madhavan was selected for an NSF GRFP Fellowship! Congratulations!
March 19, 2021
In collaboration with Andrew Houck and Bob Cava, we have demonstrated a new superconducting transmon qubit with coherence times in excess of 0.3 ms!
March 15, 2021
Our paper detailing a proposal for hybrid III-V diamond photonics for neutral SiV quantum nodes was published in Optics Express
Research article:
https://www.osapublishing.org/oe/fulltext.cfm?uri=oe-29-6-9174&id=449074
November 30, 2020
Our paper reporting optically detected magnetic resonance in the neutral silicon vacancy center was published in Physical Review Letters
Research article: https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.237402
August 26, 2020
We are excited to launch the Co-Design Center for Quantum Advantage (C2QA), a Department of Energy QIS research center! Princeton University plays a major leadership role in C2QA, and Nathalie will be leading the Materials Thrust.
August 18, 2020
Our paper on charge state dynamics and optically detected electron spin resonance contrast of shallow nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond was published in Physical Review Research
August 1, 2020
Welcome to Aveek Dutta and Jared Rovny, new postdocs joining this summer. Congratulations also to Jared, who will be one if the inaugural PQI fellows!
April 16, 2020
Alex Abulnaga earned a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Post-graduate Doctoral Fellowship. Congratulations, Alex!
October 1, 2019
Mattias Fitzpatrick was awarded an Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Research Fellowship. Congratulations, Mattias!
September 26, 2019
Our paper on engineering highly coherent shallow NV centers was published in PRX
Research article: https://journals.aps.org/prx/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevX.9.031052
May 22, 2019
Ding Huang earned the 2nd place Award for Best Student Poster at the Latsis Diamond Photonics Symposium at EPFL for his poster, "Nanophotonics for telecom quantum networks based on neutral silicon vacancy centers in diamond"
July 6, 2018
Our paper on the neutral silicon vacancy center in diamond was published in Science
Research article: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6397/60
News coverage:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05644-6
https://www.osa-opn.org/home/newsroom/2018/july/a_step_toward_quantum_repeaters/
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/designer-diamonds-could-one-day-help-build-quantum-internet
https://nypost.com/2018/07/06/scientists-are-using-diamonds-to-send-secret-messages/
https://www.inverse.com/article/46728-synthetic-diamonds-are-necessary-for-quantum-computing-privacy
June 4, 2018
Zihuai Zhang earned the Princeton Electrical Engineering Early Career Award
