No Arabic abstract
We investigated the depth dependence of coherence times of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers through precisely depth controlling by a moderately oxidative at 580{deg}C in air. By successive nanoscale etching, NV centers could be brought close to the diamond surface step by step, which enable us to trace the evolution of the number of NV centers remained in the chip and to study the depth dependence of coherence times of NV centers with the diamond etching. Our results showed that the coherence times of NV centers declined rapidly with the depth reduction in their last about 22 nm before they finally disappeared, revealing a critical depth for the influence of rapid fluctuating surface spin bath. By monitoring the coherence time variation with depth, we could make a shallow NV center with long coherence time for detecting external spins with high sensitivity.
Nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond is an ideal candidate for quantum sensors because of its excellent optical and coherence property. However, previous studies are usually conducted at low or room temperature. The lack of full knowledge of coherence properties of the NV center at high temperature limits NVs further applications. Here, we systematically explore the coherence properties of the NV center ensemble at temperatures from 300 K to 600 K. Coherence time $T_2$ decreases rapidly from $184 mu s$ at 300 K to $30 mu s$ at 600 K, which is attributed to the interaction with paramagnetic impurities. Single-quantum and double-quantum relaxation rates show an obvious temperature-dependent behavior as well, and both of them are dominated by the two phonon Raman process. While the inhomogeneous dephasing time $T_2^*$ and thermal echo decoherence time $T_{TE}$ remain almost unchanged as temperature rises. Since $T_{TE}$ changed slightly as temperature rises, a thermal-echo-based thermometer is demonstrated to have a sensitivity of $41 mK/sqrt{Hz}$ at 450 K. These findings will help to pave the way toward NV-based high-temperature sensing, as well as to have a more comprehensive understanding of the origin of decoherence in the solid-state qubit.
With the advent of quantum technology, nitrogen vacancy ($NV$) centers in diamond turn out to be a frontier which provides an efficient platform for quantum computation, communication and sensing applications. Due to the coupled spin-charge dynamics of the $NV$ system, knowledge about $NV$ charge state dynamics can help to formulate efficient spin control sequences strategically. Through this paper we report two spectroscopy-based deconvolution methods to create charge state mapping images of ensembles of $NV$ centers in diamond. First, relying on the fact that an off axis external magnetic field mixes the electronic spins and selectively modifies the photoluminescence (PL) of $NV^-$, we perform decomposition of the optical spectrum for an ensemble of $NV$s and extract the spectra for $NV^-$ and $NV^0$ states. Next, we introduce an optical filter based decomposition protocol and perform PL imaging for $NV^-$ and $NV^0$. Earlier obtained spectra for $NV^-$ and $NV^0$ states are used to calculate their transmissivities through a long pass optical filter. These results help us to determine the spatial distribution of the $NV$ charge states in a diamond sample.
We demonstrate a robust experimental method for determining the depth of individual shallow Nitrogen-Vacancy (NV) centers in diamond with $sim1$ nm uncertainty. We use a confocal microscope to observe single NV centers and detect the proton nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) signal produced by objective immersion oil, which has well understood nuclear spin properties, on the diamond surface. We determine the NV center depth by analyzing the NV NMR data using a model that describes the interaction of a single NV center with the statistically-polarized proton spin bath. We repeat this procedure for a large number of individual, shallow NV centers and compare the resulting NV depths to the mean value expected from simulations of the ion implantation process used to create the NV centers, with reasonable agreement.
We propose an efficient method for calculating level anti-crossing spectra (LAC spectra) of interacting paramagnetic defect centers in crystals. By LAC spectra we mean the magnetic field dependence of the photoluminescence intensity of paramagnetic color centers: such field dependences often exhibit sharp features, such as peaks or dips, originating from LACs in the spin system. Our approach takes into account the electronic Zeeman interaction with the external magnetic field, dipole-dipole interaction of paramagnetic centers, hyperfine coupling of paramagnetic defects to magnetic nuclei and zero-field splitting. By using this method, we can not only obtain the positions of lines in LAC spectra, but also reproduce their shapes as well as the relative amplitudes of different lines. As a striking example, we present a calculation of LAC spectra in diamond crystals containing negatively charged NV centers.
We show that nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond can produce a novel quantum hyperbolic metamaterial. We demonstrate that a hyperbolic dispersion relation in diamond with NV centers can be engineered and dynamically tuned by applying a magnetic field. This quantum hyperbolic metamaterial with a tunable window for the negative refraction allows for the construction of a superlens beyond the diffraction limit. In addition to subwavelength imaging, this NV-metamaterial can be used in spontaneous emission enhancement, heat transport and acoustics, analogue cosmology, and lifetime engineering. Therefore, our proposal interlinks the two hotspot fields, i.e., NV centers and metamaterials.