Welcome to the de Leon Group
The de Leon lab is focused on building quantum devices with color centers in wide bandgap materials. These color centers act as artificial atoms in the solid state, and can have remarkable optical and spin properties. We study nanophotonics, device physics, quantum optics, spectroscopy, and materials science in diamond with the technological goals of realizing quantum networks and nanoscale sensors. We are also interested in exploring fundamental quantum optics, magnetism and interactions between spins, and new material systems for quantum technologies. Our group is highly interdisciplinary, and our work spans optics and photonics, surface science and materials spectroscopy, atomic physics, nanofabrication, optoelectronics, and cryogenics. We are fortunate to have collaborators around the world that are experts in diamond synthesis, processing, and characterization, surface spectroscopy, EPR, STM, and DFT calculations of defects in wide bandgap materials.
We collaborate broadly, and benefit from a large research community focused on quantum science and engineering at Princeton:
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
