Optical spin manipulation relies on spin-orbit coupling, a relativistic effect. In the nitrogen
vacancy center in diamond, composed of low atomic-number elements, this effect is weak. This
places a limit on the speed of optical control over the spin ground states of the negatively charged
nitrogen vacancy center, as well as on the bandwidth of optical pulses that these states can store.
This limit does not apply to same-spin orbital level systems. Here we propose the orbital ground
states of the neutral nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond as a solid state platform for ultrafast
optically-controlled quantum information processing, as well as broadband, low noise light storage.