Nuclear spin quantum memory in silicon carbide

Transition metal (TM) defects in silicon carbide (SiC) are a promising platform for applications in quantum technology. Some TM defects, e.g., vanadium, emit in one of the telecom bands, but the large ground-state hyperfine manifold poses a problem for applications which require pure quantum states. We develop a driven, dissipative protocol to polarize the nuclear spin, based on a rigorous theoretical model of the defect. We further show that nuclear-spin polarization enables the use of well-known methods for initialization and long time coherent storage of quantum states. The proposed nuclear-spin preparation protocol thus marks the first step towards an all-optically controlled integrated platform for quantum technology with TM defects in SiC.