Modeling of Transition Metal Color Centers in Diamond

Diamond stands out among single-photon sources due to an intrinsically large band gap, photo-stable emission, room-temperature operation, short excited state lifetimes, and the ability to host hundreds of different color centers. Currently, most of these centers are active in the optical spectrum, but a single-photon source in the infrared would represent a significant advancement. In pursuit of this end, a number of different transition metal atoms have been studied as dopants in the diamond lattice via the GAMESS (General Atomic Molecular and Electronic Structure System) cluster calculation package. The importance of cluster size and electron correlation effects is considered, and excitation energies have been calculated via time-dependent density functional theory.