UC Berkeley

We demonstrate that the spin decoherence of nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers in diamond can be suppressed by a transverse magnetic field if the electron spin bath is the primary decoherence source. The NV spin coherence, created in "a decoherence-free subspace," is protected by the transverse component of the zero-field splitting, increasing the spin-coherence time about twofold. The decoherence due to the electron spin bath is also suppressed at magnetic fields stronger than ∼25 G when applied parallel to the NV symmetry axis. Our method can be used to extend the spin-coherence time of similar spin systems for applications in quantum computing, field sensing, and other metrologies. © 2013 American Physical Society.