No Arabic abstract
Nuclear spin ensembles in diamond are promising candidates for quantum sensing applications, including rotation sensing. Here we perform a characterization of the optically detected nuclear-spin transitions associated with the 14N nuclear spin within diamond nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers. We observe nuclear-spin-dependent fluorescence with the contrast of optically detected 14N nuclear Rabi oscillations comparable to that of the NV electron spin. Using Ramsey spectroscopy, we investigate the temperature and magnetic-field dependence of the nuclear spin transitions in the 77.5-420 K and 350-675 G range, respectively. The nuclear quadrupole coupling constant Q was found to vary with temperature T yielding d|Q|/dT=-35.0(2) Hz/K at T=297 K. The temperature and magnetic field dependencies reported here are important for quantum sensing applications such as rotation sensing and potentially for applications in quantum information processing.
The diamond nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center is a leading platform for quantum information science due to its optical addressability and room-temperature spin coherence. However, measurements of the NV centers spin state typically require averaging over many cycles to overcome noise. Here, we review several approaches to improve the readout performance and highlight future avenues of research that could enable single-shot electron-spin readout at room temperature.
Machine learning is a powerful tool in finding hidden data patterns for quantum information processing. Here, we introduce this method into the optical readout of electron-spin states in diamond via single-photon collection and demonstrate improved readout precision at room temperature. The traditional method of summing photon counts in a time gate loses all the timing information crudely. We find that changing the gate width can only optimize the contrast or the state variance, not both. In comparison, machine learning adaptively learns from time-resolved fluorescence data, and offers the optimal data processing model that elaborately weights each time bin to maximize the extracted information. It is shown that our method can repair the processing result from imperfect data, reducing 7% in spin readout error while optimizing the contrast. Note that these improvements only involve recording photon time traces and consume no additional experimental time, they are thus robust and free. Our machine learning method implies a wide range of applications in precision measurement and optical detection of states.
We present an experimental and theoretical study of electronic spin decoherence in ensembles of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) color centers in bulk high-purity diamond at room temperature. Under appropriate conditions, we find ensemble NV spin coherence times (T_2) comparable to that of single NVs, with T_2 > 600 microseconds for a sample with natural abundance of 13C and paramagnetic impurity density ~10^15 cm^(-3). We also observe a sharp decrease of the coherence time with misalignment of the static magnetic field relative to the NV electronic spin axis, consistent with theoretical modeling of NV coupling to a 13C nuclear spin bath. The long coherence times and increased signal-to-noise provided by room-temperature NV ensembles will aid many applications of NV centers in precision magnetometry and quantum information.
Magnetic field sensors that exploit quantum effects have shown that they can outperform classical sensors in terms of sensitivity enabling a range of novel applications in future, such as a brain machine interface. Negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond have emerged as a promising high sensitivity platform for measuring magnetic fields at room temperature. Transferring this technology from laboratory setups into products and applications, the total size of the sensor, the overall power consumption, and the costs need to be reduced and optimized. Here, we demonstrate a fiber-based NV magnetometer featuring a complete integration of all functional components without using any bulky laboratory equipment. This integrated prototype allows portable measurement of magnetic fields with a sensitivity of 344 pT/ SqrtHz.
We utilize nonlinear absorption to design all-optical protocols that improve both charge state initialization and spin readout for the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond. Non-monotonic variations in the equilibrium charge state as a function of visible and near-infrared (NIR) optical power are attributed to competing multiphoton absorption processes. In certain regimes, multicolor illumination enhances the steady-state population of the NVs negative charge state above 90%. At higher NIR intensities, selective ionization of the singlet manifold facilitates a protocol for spin-to-charge conversion that dramatically enhances the spin readout fidelity. We demonstrate a 6-fold increase in the signal-to-noise ratio for single-shot spin measurements and predict an orders-of-magnitude experimental speedup over traditional methods for emerging applications in magnetometry and quantum information science using NV spins.