Abstract
The coherent excitation of an optically active spin system is one of the key elements in the engineering of a spin-photon interface. Using the novel SUPER scheme, we coherently control the main optical transition of a tin-vacancy color center in diamond with nonresonant ultrashort optical pulses. Furthermore, we implement a femtosecond control scheme using resonant pulses for achieving record short quantum gates applied to diamond color centers. We simulate the applicability of the SUPER scheme to spin qubits and experimentally investigate spin mixing. Finally, we propose a spin-spin entanglement scheme in a scenario where the excitation with broadband pulses is incompatible with spin-selective excitation. The employed ultrafast quantum gates open up a new regime of quantum control with solid-state color centers, enabling multi-gate operations and efficient spectral filtering of the excitation laser from deterministically prepared coherent photons.