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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

Electric and magnetic sensing with NV ensembles in diamonds

Sarvagya Sharma, Chris Hovde, Fahad S. Alghannam, BECK Douglas howard

Published Jan 27, 2017• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We report measurements of optically detected magnetic resonance spectra of ensembles of nitrogen-vacancy (NV-) centers in diamonds in the presence of electromagnetic fields. To reduce inhomogeneous broadening, the spectra are acquired from a region of 20 cubic microns in a CVD(Chemical Vapor Deposition) diamond through a confocal microscope. The Stark shift from transverse electric fields is enhanced at avoided crossings between the hyperfine levels that arise from interaction with 14N(I = 1) nuclei in the diamond lattice. As expected from previous reports, the Stark shift of the spectral lines is stronger when there is no magnetic field along the NV axis. The shift is also strong, but for different transitions, at a field of about 100 uT.

DOI
10.1117/12.2252562

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We report measurements of optically detected magnetic resonance spectra of ensembles of nitrogen-vacancy (NV-) centers in diamonds in the presence of electromagnetic fields. To reduce inhomogeneous broadening, the spectra are acquired from a region of 20 cubic microns in a CVD(Chemical Vapor Deposition) diamond through a confocal microscope. The Stark shift from transverse electric fields is enhanced at avoided crossings between the hyperfine levels that arise from interaction with 14N(I = 1) nuclei in the diamond lattice. As expected from previous reports, the Stark shift of the spectral lines is stronger when there is no magnetic field along the NV axis. The shift is also strong, but for different transitions, at a field of about 100 uT.
We report measurements of optically detected magnetic resonance spectra of ensembles of negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamonds in the presence of strain and DC external electric fields. The Stark shift of the spectral lines is stronger when the axial magnetic field along the NV centers quantization axis is minimized. The shift is also enhanced at avoided crossings between the hyperfine levels at an axial field of 77 uT. Since the intrinsic strain in the diamond also induces a Stark shift, we are able to calculate the magnitude and direction of the strain within the crystal. We also use the Stark effect to map the electric field in the diamond volume between patterned electrodes.
Ensembles of negatively charged nitrogen vacancy centers in diamonds are investigated as optical sensors for electric and magnetic fields in the interaction region of a neutron electric dipole moment experiment. As a first step towards measuring electric fields, the Stark shift is investigated in the ground electronic state, using optically detected magnetic resonance (ODMR) to measure hyperfine-resolved fine structure transitions. One detection approach is to modulate the electric field and demodulate the ODMR signal at the modulation frequency or its harmonic. Models indicate that the ratio of the amplitudes of these signals provides information about the magnitude of the electric field. Experiments show line shapes consistent with the models. Methods are considered for extending this technique to all-optical measurement of fields. Additionally, progress is reported towards an all-optical, fiberized sensor based on electromagnetically-induced transparency (EIT), which may be suitable for measuring magnetic fields. The design uses total internal reflection to provide a long optical path through the diamond for both the 637 nm EIT laser and a green repump laser.
Negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy (NV${}^{\ensuremath{-}}$) centers in diamond have generated much recent interest for their use in sensing. The sensitivity improves when the NV ground-state microwave transitions are narrow, but these transitions suffer from inhomogeneous broadening, especially in high-density NV ensembles. To better understand and remove the sources of broadening, we demonstrate room-temperature spectral ``hole burning'' of the NV ground-state transitions. We find that hole burning removes the broadening caused by magnetic fields from 13{}^{13}13C nuclei and demonstrate that it can be used for magnetic-field-insensitive thermometry.
The electronic spins of the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in chemical-vapor-deposition (CVD) grown diamonds form ideal probes of magnetic fields and temperature, as well as promising qubits for quantum information processing. Studying and controlling the magnetic environment of NV centers in such high-purity crystals is thus essential for these applications. We demonstrate optical detection of paramagnetic species, such as hydrogen-related complexes, in a CVD-grown diamond. The resonant transfer of the NV centers' polarized electronic spins to the electronic spins of these species generates conspicuous features in the NV photoluminescence when employing magnetic field scans along the [100] crystal direction. Our results offer prospects for more detailed studies of CVD-grown processes as well as for coherent control of the spin of novel classes of hyperpolarized paramagnetic species.
Ensembles of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond are versatile quantum sensors with broad applications in the physical and life sciences. The concentration of neutral substitutional nitrogen ( [ N s 0 ]) strongly influences NV electronic spin coherence times, sensitivity, and optimal sensing strategies. Diamonds with [ N s 0 ] ∼ 1–10 ppm are a focus of recent material engineering efforts, with higher concentrations being favorable for continuous-wave optically detected magnetic resonance (CW-ODMR) and lower concentrations expected to benefit pulsed magnetometry techniques through extended NV spin coherence times and improved sensing duty cycles. In this work, we synthesize and characterize low- [ N s 0 ] ( ∼ 0.8 ppm), NV-enriched diamond material, engineered through low-strain chemical vapor deposition (CVD) growth on high-quality substrates, 12 C isotopic purification, and controlled electron irradiation and annealing. Our results demonstrate good strain homogeneity in diamonds grown on CVD substrates and spin-bath-limited NV dephasing times. By measuring NV spin and charge properties across a wide range of optical NV excitation intensity, we provide direct comparisons of photon-shot-noise-limited magnetic field sensitivity between the current low- [ N s 0 ] and previously studied higher- [ N s 0 ] ( ∼ 14 ppm) NV-diamond sensors. We show that low- [ N s 0 ] diamond can outperform higher- [ N s 0 ] diamond at moderate and low optical NV excitation intensity. Our results provide practical benchmarks and guidance for selecting NV-diamond sensors tailored to specific experimental constraints and sensing requirements.
Diamond nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers are widely studied for quantum sensing in multiple physical fields due to their long coherence time and room-temperature optical readout. However, accurately decoupling and extracting signals for individual fields from fluorescence remains a major challenge. In this work, by establishing the spatial configuration between the four axes of the NV center and the directions of the externally applied electric and magnetic fields, the resonance frequency shifts of two pairs in the ODMR spectrum are exclusively induced by the electric field, whereas those of the other two pairs are exclusively induced by the magnetic field. Consequently, effective decoupling and readout of the electric field signal are realized. The experiments measure electric fields from 0 to 20 kV/cm in the diamond sample, revealing a linear relationship between the resonance frequency shift and the applied electric field, with coefficients 0.1713MHz/(kV/cm) and 0.1660MHz/(kV/cm) matching the NV center’s linear Stark effect, laying the foundation for subsequent research on electric field measurement.