  The ground state spin of the negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy center in
diamond has been the platform for the recent rapid expansion of new frontiers
in quantum metrology and solid state quantum information processing. In ambient
conditions, the spin has been demonstrated to be a high precision magnetic and
electric field sensor as well as a solid state qubit capable of coupling with
nearby nuclear and electronic spins. However, in spite of its many outstanding
demonstrations, the theory of the spin has not yet been fully developed and
there does not currently exist thorough explanations for many of its
properties, such as the anisotropy of the electron g-factor and the existence
of Stark effects and strain splittings. In this work, the theory of the ground
state spin is fully developed for the first time using the molecular orbital
theory of the center in order to provide detailed explanations for the spin's
fine and hyperfine structures and its interactions with electric, magnetic and
strain fields.
