Glowing diamonds are a quantum scientist’s best friend

Davide Castelvecchi

Marko Lončar

Diamond possesses remarkable physical and chemical properties, and in many ways is the ultimate engineering material. For example, it is transparent from the ultra-violet to infrared, has a high refractive index (n = 2.4), strong optical nonlinearity (Kerr and Raman) and a wide variety of light-emitting defects. These properties make diamond a highly desirable material for many applications, including those in quantum and nonlinear photonics, high power optics and optomechanics.

Shintaro Nomura

Senkalla, Katharina

From jewelry stores to quantum labs — diamonds have found a new sparkle in the world of quantum technologies. Their atomic-scale color centers host electron and nuclear spins that can serve as long-lived qubits and bright photon sources, making them powerful candidates for realizing quantum networks. In this talk, I’ll explore how these tiny defects in diamond enable us to connect stationary quantum memories through flying photonic qubits. We’ll look at the fundamental principles, key experimental advances, and ongoing challenges in creating scalable quantum links — and discuss how “shining light on defects” may become the key to the quantum internet.