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arXiv:2112.00506 · Physical Review A

Vector dc magnetic-field sensing with a reference microwave field using perfectly aligned nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond

Takuya Isogawa, Yuichiro Matsuzaki, Junko Ishi‐Hayase

Published Jun 29, 2023• 10 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The measurement of vector magnetic fields with high sensitivity and spatial resolution is important for both fundamental science and engineering applications. In particular, magnetic-field sensing with nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond is a promising approach that can outperform existing methods. Recent studies have demonstrated vector dc magnetic-field sensing with perfectly aligned NV centers, which showed a higher readout contrast than NV centers having four equally distributed orientations. However, to estimate the azimuthal angle of the target magnetic field with respect to the NV axis in these previous approaches, it is necessary to apply a strong reference dc magnetic field, which can perturb the system to be measured. This is a crucial problem, especially when attempting to measure vector magnetic fields from materials that are sensitive to applied dc magnetic fields. Here, we propose a method to measure vector dc magnetic fields using perfectly aligned NV centers without reference dc magnetic fields. This method can be performed even with a single NV center. More specifically, we use the direction of linearly polarized microwave fields to induce Rabi oscillation as a reference and we estimate the azimuthal angle of the target fields from the Rabi frequency. We further demonstrate the potential of our method to improve sensitivity by using entangled states to overcome the standard quantum limit. Our method of using a reference microwave field is an alternative technique for sensitive vector dc magnetic-field sensing.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.107.062423

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The measurement of vector magnetic fields with high sensitivity and spatial resolution is important for both fundamental science and engineering applications. In particular, magnetic-field sensing with nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond is a promising approach that can outperform existing methods. Recent studies have demonstrated vector dc magnetic-field sensing with perfectly aligned NV centers, which showed a higher readout contrast than NV centers having four equally distributed orientations. However, to estimate the azimuthal angle of the target magnetic field with respect to the NV axis in these previous approaches, it is necessary to apply a strong reference dc magnetic field, which can perturb the system to be measured. This is a crucial problem, especially when attempting to measure vector magnetic fields from materials that are sensitive to applied dc magnetic fields. Here, we propose a method to measure vector dc magnetic fields using perfectly aligned NV centers without reference dc magnetic fields. This method can be performed even with a single NV center. More specifically, we use the direction of linearly polarized microwave fields to induce Rabi oscillation as a reference and we estimate the azimuthal angle of the target fields from the Rabi frequency. We further demonstrate the potential of our method to improve sensitivity by using entangled states to overcome the standard quantum limit. Our method of using a reference microwave field is an alternative technique for sensitive vector dc magnetic-field sensing.
Abstract Imaging of microwave magnetic fields with nano-scale resolution has interesting applications. Specifically, detecting the orientation of microwave fields is useful in condensed matter physics and quantum control. However, most of the existing methods for microwave field imaging are limited to detecting the magnitude of the fields. Due to their small sensor size and favorable optical and spin properties, nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond are highly suitable for imaging dc and ac magnetic fields. The reported methods for detecting the direction of microwave magnetic fields use pulsed Rabi frequency measurements. Here, we demonstrate imaging of the direction of linearly polarized microwave magnetic fields using only continuous-wave experiments on NV centers. This simplifies the sensor apparatus and is particularly advantageous in applications where pulsing of the target microwave field is not possible. The method requires a static bias magnetic field oriented perpendicular to the quantization axis of NV centers. We detect the direction of an arbitrary microwave magnetic field using NV centers of two different orientations of an NV ensemble. Moreover, we demonstrate that the projection of the microwave fields onto a plane can be imaged using NV centers of a single orientation. This can be straightforwardly implemented using a single NV center.
This study introduces a method for reconstructing vector microwave magnetic fields using a single nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in locally strong effective fields with two different orientations in diamond, without the previously required external magnetic field. Due to the varying orientations of the effective fields, NV centers exhibit two distinct sets of switchable ground states. The resonant Rabi oscillations of an NV center in these two distinct states were utilized to reconstruct vector microwave magnetic fields. Remarkably, this technique achieves an angular resolution of 0.02 mrad/Hz. Overcoming the limitations inherent in previous practices of using NV ensembles, this breakthrough has the potential to substantially enhance both the spatial resolution and the sensitivity of microwave magnetic field imaging, a meaningful development for various scientific and technological applications.
An ensemble of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond is an attractive device to detect small magnetic fields. In particular, by exploiting the fact that the NV center can be aligned along one of four different axes due to ${C}_{3\ensuremath{\nu}}$ symmetry, it is possible to extract information concerning vector magnetic fields. However, in the conventional scheme, low readout contrasts of the NV centers significantly decrease the sensitivity of the vector-magnetic-field sensing. Here, we propose a way to improve the sensitivity of the vector-magnetic-field sensing of the NV centers using multifrequency control. Since the Zeeman energy of the NV centers depends on the direction of the axis, we can independently control the four types of NV centers using microwave pulses with different frequencies. This allows us to use every NV center for the vector field detection in parallel, which effectively increases the readout contrast. Our results pave the way to realize a practical diamond-based vector field sensor.
An ensemble of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond is a fascinating candidate for realizing a sensitive magnetic field sensor. In particular, since the axes of the NV centers are distributed along four directions, a collection of measurement data from NV centers with different axes provides information on the vector components of a magnetic field. However, in the conventional approach, the low measurement contrast of NV centers limits the sensitivity of vector magnetic field sensing. Recently, to overcome this problem, multi-frequency control of the NV centers has been proposed. The key idea is that four types of NV centers with different axes are simultaneously controlled by multi-frequency microwave pulses. Here, we demonstrate vector magnetic field sensing with an ensemble of NV centers in diamond via such multi-frequency control with pulsed-type measurements. We use Hahn echo pulses and extract information on the vector components of an applied AC magnetic field. We find that the sensitivity of the vector field sensing with multi-frequency control is better than that with single-frequency control for every vector component of a magnetic field.
Quantum sensors based on nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers in diamond have been a central topic in the sensing community for more than a decade. The extraordinary properties at room temperature of the spin system in diamond have made it one of the most prominent quantum platforms for the development of commercial quantum sensors. In particular, the sensitivity of the electronic spin in NV centers has made diamond-based magnetic sensors of special interest for their potential application in medical, industrial or navigation solutions. However, the use of these sensors for universal vector magnetometry was constrained by the need for previous knowledge on the field being measured to fully exploit their benefits. In this work, we show a method to perform unconditional vector magnetometry without the need of external information on the magnetic field, based only on the spatial arrangement of the diamond and the microwave antenna combination. While previous NV-based vector magnetometry methods require partial knowledge of the magnetic field (e.g. a calibrated bias field), we exploit the possibilities of selecting particular directions of the spins in the diamond with elliptically polarized microwave fields. We prove that our method allows to estimate both magnitude and direction of external magnetic fields without further assumptions or constraints.
Determination and control of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers play an important role in sensing the vector field by using their quantum information. To measure orientation of NV centers in a diamond particle attached to a tapered fiber rapidly, we propose a new method to establish the direction cosine matrix between the lab frame and the NV body frame. In this method, only four groups of the ODMR spectrum peaks shift data need to be collected, and the magnetic field along ± Z and ± Y in the lab frame is applied in the meantime. We can also control any NV axis to rotate to the X, Y, Z axes in the lab frame according to the elements of this matrix. The demonstration of the DC and microwave magnetic field vector sensing is presented. Finally, the proposed method can help us to perform vector magnetic field sensing more conveniently and rapidly.