A diamond age of masers

Noriaki Horiuchi

Alexander Sherman, Lotem Buchbinder, Siyuan Ding +1 more

Masers, the microwave analog of lasers, are an important class of devices that can be used to generate highly coherent and stable microwave signals as well as quantum-limited amplification of microwave photons. Recently, the interest in such devices has increased, probably owing to experiments demonstrating the successful operation at room temperature of solid-state maser employing defects in diamond. These defects, called nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers, are comprised of a negatively charged substitutional nitrogen that replaces one of the diamond crystal lattice’s carbons and a vacancy adjacent to the excluded carbon atom. The performance of diamond-based masers, in terms of gain, noise, bandwidth, frequency of operation, and saturation, greatly depends upon the specific diamond crystal composition and its geometry in the respective microwave device. The currently available data on these issues are scarce and sometimes conflicting. It is, therefore, important to provide additional experimental data, complemented by theoretical analysis, to further optimize the required diamond material and thus enhance the capabilities of diamond-based maser technology. The latter is currently limited to operate only as an oscillator at very small bandwidths, with low saturation power. Here, we provide experimental results on a set of important parameters affecting diamond maser operation, such as the population and linewidth of the electron spin energy levels of the NVs under light illumination, as well as their relaxation times for several different diamond material compositions. These results are then used to point out which diamond material compositions and crystal geometry may be best suitable for maser-type applications.

Yongqiang Wen, Phil Diggle, Neil McN. Alford +1 more

Masers—the microwave analog of lasers—are coherent microwave sources that can act as oscillators or quantum-limited amplifiers. Masers have historically required high vacuum and cryogenic temperatures to operate, but recently, masers based on diamond have been demonstrated to operate at room temperature and pressure, opening a route to new applications as ultra-low noise microwave amplifiers. For these new applications to become feasible at a mass scale, it is important to optimize diamond masers by minimizing their size and maximizing the power of signals that can be amplified. Here, we develop and numerically solve an extended rate equation model to present a detailed phenomenology of masing dynamics and determine the optimal properties required for the copper cavity, dielectric resonator, and gain medium in order to develop portable maser devices. We conclude by suggesting how the material parameters of the diamond gain media and dielectric resonators used in diamond masers can be optimized, and how rate equation models could be further developed to incorporate the effects of temperature and nitrogen concentration on spin lifetimes.

JOHN C. MORRISON

Hans Motz

L. Jin, Matthias Pfender, Nabeel Aslam +4 more

The application of masers is limited by its demanding working conditions (high vacuum or low temperature). A room-temperature solid-state maser is highly desirable, but the lifetimes of emitters (electron spins) in solids at room temperature are usually too short (∼ns) for population inversion. Masing from pentacene spins in p-terphenyl crystals, which have a long spin lifetime (∼0.1 ms), has been demonstrated. This maser, however, operates only in the pulsed mode. Here we propose a room-temperature maser based on nitrogen-vacancy centres in diamond, which features the longest known solid-state spin lifetime (∼5 ms) at room temperature, high optical pumping efficiency (∼10(6) s(-1)) and material stability. Our numerical simulation demonstrates that a maser with a coherence time of approximately minutes is feasible under readily accessible conditions (cavity Q-factor ∼5 × 10(4), diamond size ∼3 × 3 × 0.5 mm(3) and pump power <10 W). A room-temperature diamond maser may facilitate a broad range of microwave technologies.