Optical and microwave control of germanium-vacancy center spins in diamond

Novel solid-state qubits have a lot to offer for quantum information processing because of the potential simplicity of engineering quantum computational hardware similar to modern silicon-based electronics. This work presents optical and electron-spin properties of a novel germanium-vacancy defect in diamond. The defect center combines high brightness and exceptional spectral stability with microwave and optical access to electron spin. The combination of a spin-\textonehalf{} qubit and an optical interface makes possible of the germanium-vacancy defect in scalable quantum networks.