Person:

Pham, Linh

We demonstrate a method of imaging spatially varying magnetic fields using a thin layer of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers at the surface of a diamond chip. Fluorescence emitted by the two-dimensional NV ensemble is detected by a CCD array, from which a vector magnetic field pattern is reconstructed. As a demonstration, ac current is passed through wires placed on the diamond chip surface, and the resulting ac magnetic field patterns are imaged using an echo-based technique with sub-micron resolution over a (140 \mu m) x (140 \mu m) field of view, giving single-pixel sensitivity (\sim 100 nT / \sqrt{Hz}). We discuss ongoing efforts to further improve the sensitivity, as well as potential bioimaging applications such as real-time imaging of activity in functional, cultured networks of neurons.

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 NV with (T_2>600 \mu s) for a sample with natural abundance of (^{13})C and paramagnetic impurity density ∼1015 cm(^{−3}). We also observe a sharp decrease in 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 (^{13})C 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.

We realize anti-reflection (AR) coatings for optical excitation and fluorescence measurements of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) color centers in bulk diamond by depositing quarter-wavelength thick silica layers on the diamondsurface. These AR coatings improve NV-diamond optical measurements by reducing optical reflection at the diamond-air interface from ≈17% to ≈2%, which allows more effective NV optical excitation and more efficient detection of NV fluorescence. We also show that diamondAR coatings eliminate standing-wave interference patterns of excitation laser intensity within bulk diamond, and thereby greatly reduce spatial variations in NV fluorescence, which can degrade spatially resolved magnetic field sensing using NV centers.

We demonstrate preferential orientation of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) color centers along two of four possible crystallographic axes in diamonds grown by chemical vapor deposition on the {100} face. We identify the relevant growth regime and present a possible explanation of this effect. We show that preferential orientation provides increased optical readout contrast for NV multispin measurements, including enhanced ac magnetic-field sensitivity, thus providing an important step towards high-fidelity multispin-qubit quantum information processing, sensing, and metrology.

We use multipulse dynamical decoupling to increase the coherence lifetime (T2) of large numbers of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) electronic spins in room temperature diamond, thus enabling scalable applications of multispin quantum information processing and metrology. We realize an order-of-magnitude extension of the NV multispin T2 in three diamond samples with widely differing spin impurity environments. In particular, for samples with nitrogen impurity concentration ≲1 ppm, we extend T2 to >2 ms, comparable to the longest coherence time reported for single NV centers, and demonstrate a tenfold enhancement in NV multispin sensing of ac magnetic fields.

Multi-qubit systems are crucial for the advancement and application of quantum science. Such systems require maintaining long coherence times while increasing the number of qubits available for coherent manipulation. For solid-state spin systems, qubit coherence is closely related to fundamental questions of many-body spin dynamics. Here we apply a coherent spectroscopic technique to characterize the dynamics of the composite solid-state spin environment of nitrogen-vacancy colour centres in room temperature diamond. We identify a possible new mechanism in diamond for suppression of electronic spin-bath dynamics in the presence of a nuclear spin bath of sufficient concentration. This suppression enhances the efficacy of dynamical decoupling techniques, resulting in increased coherence times for multi-spin-qubit systems, thus paving the way for applications in quantum information, sensing and metrology.

A common limitation of experiments using color centers in diamond is the poor photon collection efficiency of microscope objectives due to refraction at the diamond interface. We present a simple and effective technique to detect a large fraction of photons emitted by color centers within a planar diamond sample by detecting light that is guided to the edges of the diamond via total internal reflection. We describe a prototype device using this “side-collection” technique, which provides a photon collection efficiency ≈47% and a photon detection efficiency ≈39%. We apply the enhanced signal-to-noise ratio gained from side collection to ac magnetometry using ensembles of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) color centers, and demonstrate an ac magnetic field sensitivity ≈100pT/Hz‾‾‾√, limited by added noise in the prototype side-collection device. Technical optimization should allow significant further improvements in photon collection and detection efficiency as well as subpicotesla NV-diamond magnetic field sensitivity using the side-collection technique.

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) provide non-invasive information about multiple nuclear species in bulk matter, with wide-ranging applications from basic physics and chemistry to biomedical imaging1. However, the spatial resolution of conventional NMR and MRI is limited2 to several micrometres even at large magnetic fields (>1 T), which is inadequate for many frontier scientific applications such as single-molecule NMR spectroscopy and in vivo MRI of individual biological cells. A promising approach for nanoscale NMR and MRI exploits optical measurements of nitrogen–vacancy (NV) colour centres in diamond, which provide a combination of magnetic field sensitivity and nanoscale spatial resolution unmatched by any existing technology, while operating under ambient conditions in a robust, solid-state system3, 4, 5. Recently, single, shallow NV centres were used to demonstrate NMR of nanoscale ensembles of proton spins, consisting of a statistical polarization equivalent to ∼100–1,000 spins in uniform samples covering the surface of a bulk diamond chip6, 7. Here, we realize nanoscale NMR spectroscopy and MRI of multiple nuclear species (1H, 19F, 31P) in non-uniform (spatially structured) samples under ambient conditions and at moderate magnetic fields (∼20 mT) using two complementary sensor modalities.

Under ambient conditions, spin impurities in solid-state systems are found in thermally mixed states and are optically “dark”; i.e., the spin states cannot be optically controlled. Nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond are an exception in that the electronic spin states are “bright”; i.e., they can be polarized by optical pumping, coherently manipulated with spin-resonance techniques, and read out optically, all at room temperature. Here we demonstrate a scheme to resonantly couple bright NV electronic spins to dark substitutional-nitrogen (P1) electronic spins by dressing their spin states with oscillating magnetic fields. This resonant coupling mechanism can be used to transfer spin polarization from NV spins to nearby dark spins and could be used to cool a mesoscopic bath of dark spins to near-zero temperature, thus providing a resource for quantum information and sensing, and aiding studies of quantum effects in many-body spin systems.

Solid-state spin systems such as nitrogen-vacancy colour centres in diamond are promising for applications of quantum information, sensing and metrology. However, a key challenge for such solid-state systems is to realize a spin coherence time that is much longer than the time for quantum spin manipulation protocols. Here we demonstrate an improvement of more than two orders of magnitude in the spin coherence time (T(_2)) of nitrogen-vacancy centres compared with previous measurements: T(_2)≈0.6 s at 77 K. We employed dynamical decoupling pulse sequences to suppress nitrogen-vacancy spin decoherence, and found that T(_2) is limited to approximately half of the longitudinal spin relaxation time over a wide range of temperatures, which we attribute to phonon-induced decoherence. Our results apply to ensembles of nitrogen-vacancy spins, and thus could advance quantum sensing, enable squeezing and many-body entanglement, and open a path to simulating driven, interaction-dominated quantum many-body Hamiltonians.