Pressure has been established as a powerful way of tuning material properties and studying various exotic quantum phases. Nonetheless, measurements under pressure are no trivial matter. To ensure a stable pressure environment, several experimental restrictions must be imposed including the limited size of a sample chamber. These have created difficulties in assembling high-pressure devices and conducting measurements. Hence, novel sensing methods that are robust and compatible with high-pressure devices under pressure are highly in demand. In this review, we discuss the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond as a versatile quantum sensor under pressure. The excellent sensitivity and superior resolution of the NV center enable exciting developments in recent years. The NV center has great potential in sensing under pressure, especially beneficial to magnetic-related measurements.
Pressure has been established as a powerful way of tuning material properties and studying various exotic quantum phases. Nonetheless, measurements under pressure are no trivial matter. To ensure a stable pressure environment, several experimental restrictions must be imposed including the limited size of a sample chamber. These have created difficulties in assembling high-pressure devices and conducting measurements. Hence, novel sensing methods that are robust and compatible with high-pressure devices under pressure are highly in demand. In this review, we discuss the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond as a versatile quantum sensor under pressure. The excellent sensitivity and superior resolution of the NV center enable exciting developments in recent years. The NV center has great potential in sensing under pressure, especially beneficial to magnetic-related measurements.
Extreme conditions, such as ultra-low temperatures, high pressures, and strong magnetic fields, are critical to producing and studying exotic states of matter. To measure physical properties under extreme conditions, the advanced sensing schemes are required. As a promising quantum sensor, the diamond nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center can detect magnetic field, electronic field, pressure, and temperature with high sensitivity. Considering its nanoscale spatial resolution and ultra-wide working range, the diamond quantum sensing can play an important role in frontier studies involving extreme conditions. This paper reviews the spin and optical properties of diamond NV center under extreme conditions, including low temperature, high temperature, zero field, strong magnetic fields, and high pressures. The opportunities and challenges of diamond quantum sensing under extreme conditions are discussed. The basic knowledge of spin-based quantum sensing and its applications under extreme conditions are also covered.
The nitrogen vacancy (NV) center has emerged as a powerful quantum sensor in high-pressure research, with the observation of optically detected magnetic resonance at megabar pressures. However, some aspects of NV physics require further investigation to optimize the development of NV-based sensing under pressure. Here, we study both experimentally and theoretically the optical properties of the NV center under hydrostatic pressure. We investigate the evolution of the zero-phonon line (ZPL) position, radiative lifetimes, optical lineshapes, and photoionization thresholds of the NV center under pressures up to ~120 GPa. We also provide spectroscopic guidelines for performing high-pressure optical experiments. Our results confirm that the NV center remains a robust quantum sensor under extreme hydrostatic pressures, especially for magnetic characterization.
The diamond anvil cell-based high-pressure technique is a unique tool for creating new states of matter and for understanding the physics underlying some exotic phenomena. In situ sensing of spin and charge properties under high pressure is crucially important but remains technically challenging. While the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond is a promising quantum sensor under extreme conditions, its spin dynamics and the quantum control of its spin states under high pressure remain elusive. In this study, we demonstrate coherent control, spin relaxation, and spin dephasing measurements for ensemble NV centers up to 32.8 GPa. With this in situ quantum sensor, we investigate the pressure-induced magnetic phase transition of a micron-size permanent magnet Nd 2 Fe 14B sample in a diamond anvil cell, with a spatial resolution of ∼2 μm, and sensitivity of ∼20 μT/Hz 1/2. This scheme could be generalized to measure other parameters such as temperature, pressure and their gradients under extreme conditions. This will be beneficial for frontier research of condensed matter physics and geophysics.
Single qubit in solid-state materials recently emerges as a versatile platform for quantum information. Among them, the nitrogen vacancy (NV) centre in diamond has become a powerful tool in quantum sensing for detecting various physics parameters, including electric and magnetic fields, temperature, force, strain, with ultimate precision and resolutions. It has been widely used in different conditions, from samples in ambient to samples in ultra-high pressure and low temperature. It can detect quantum phase transitions as well as neuron activities. Here we give a general review on both the physics of the sensing mechanism and protocols and applications.
Diamond quantum technologies based on color centers have rapidly emerged in the most recent years. The nitrogen-vacancy (NV) color center has attracted a particular interest, thanks to its outstanding spin properties and optical addressability. The NV center has been used to realize innovative multimode quantum-enhanced sensors that offer an unprecedented combination of high sensitivity and spatial resolution at room temperature. The technological progress and the widening of potential sensing applications have induced an increasing demand for performance advances of NV quantum sensors. Quantum control plays a key role in responding to this demand. This short review affords an overview on recent advances in quantum control-assisted quantum sensing and spectroscopy of magnetic fields.
In modern-day quantum metrology, quantum sensors are widely employed to detect weak magnetic fields or nanoscale signals. Quantum devices, exploiting quantum coherence, are inevitably connected to physical constants and can achieve accuracy, repeatability, and precision approaching fundamental limits. As a result, these sensors have shown utility in a wide range of research domains spanning both science and technology. A rapidly emerging quantum sensing platform employs atomic-scale defects in crystals. In particular, magnetometry using nitrogen-vacancy (NV) color centers in diamond has garnered increasing interest. NV systems possess a combination of remarkable properties, optical addressability, long coherence times, and biocompatibility. Sensors based on NV centers excel in spatial resolution and magnetic sensitivity. These diamond-based sensors promise comparable combination of high spatial resolution and magnetic sensitivity without cryogenic operation. The above properties of NV magnetometers promise increasingly integrated quantum measurement technology, as a result, they have been extensively developed with various protocols and find use in numerous applications spanning materials characterization, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), condensed matter physics, paleomagnetism, neuroscience and living systems biology, and industrial vector magnetometry. In this chapter, NV centers are explored for magnetic sensing in a number of contexts. In general, we introduce novel regimes for magnetic-field probes with NV ensembles. Specifically, NV centers are developed for sensitive magnetometers for applications where microwaves (MWs) are prohibitively invasive and operations need to be carried out under zero ambient magnetic field. The primary goal of our discussion is to improve the utility of these NV center-based magnetometers.