Room-temperature spin-photon interface for quantum networks

Although remarkable progress has been achieved recently, to construct an optical cavity where a nitrogen-vacancy (NV) colour centre in diamond is coupled to an optical field in the strong coupling regime is rather difficult. We propose an architecture for a scalable quantum interface capable of interconverting photonic and NV spin qubits, which can work well without the strong coupling requirement. The dynamics of the interface applies an adiabatic passage to sufficiently reduce the decoherence from an excited state of a NV colour centre in diamond. This quantum interface can accomplish many quantum network operations like state transfer and entanglement distribution between qubits at distant nodes. Exact numerical simulations show that high-fidelity quantum interface operations can be achieved under room-temperature and realistic experimental conditions.