Exarhos, Annemarie L.Hopper, David A.Patel, Raj N.Doherty, MarcusBassett, Lee C.2019-02-192019-02-192041-1723http://hdl.handle.net/1885/156434Optically addressable spins associated with defects in wide-bandgap semiconductors are versatile platforms for quantum information processing and nanoscale sensing, where spindependent inter-system crossing transitions facilitate optical spin initialization and readout. Recently, the van der Waals material hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) has emerged as a robust host for quantum emitters, promising efficient photon extraction and atom-scale engineering, but observations of spin-related effects have remained thus far elusive. Here, we report room-temperature observations of strongly anisotropic photoluminescence patterns as a function of applied magnetic field for select quantum emitters in h-BN. Field-dependent variations in the steady-state photoluminescence and photon emission statistics are consistent with an electronic model featuring a spin-dependent inter-system crossing between triplet and singlet manifolds, indicating that optically-addressable spin defects are present in h-BN.This work was supported by the Army Research Office (W911NF-15-1-0589). M.W.D. was supported by the Australian Research Council (DE170100169)application/pdfen-AU© 2019 The Author(s)http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/2019-01-1510.1038/s41467-018-08185-82019-01-20Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License