Colored center in diamond for quantum optics

Over the past twenty years, remarkable progress has been made in isolating single quantum systems and controlling the coupling to their environment. A lot of efforts were undertaken using ultra-cold single trapped atoms for reaching these goals. Amongst the most recent important experimental realisations, one can list the demonstration of 14 entangled ions, their use as quantum simulators, the generation of long distance entanglement between atoms, the realisation of ultra-stable clocks and the observation of very pristine quantum-electrodynamical effects. Inspired by these developments, we intend to transfer part of the knowledge developed over the past decades in the field of single ultra-cold atoms to NV centres in diamonds. Indeed, nitrogen vacancy (NV) defects in diamonds are now reaching an unprecedented degree of control that will enable most of these above experiments to be soon realised in a solid state environment.