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AIP Advances

Coherent manipulation of nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond via frequency multiplication

Pin Yu -, Rujian Zhang, Renfei Zheng, Hui Lin, Ting Zhang, Jingwei Fan, Bing Chen

Published Jun 1, 2023• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond as ideally individual spin quantum systems can be coherently manipulated by microwave fields. Compared to the traditional method using the IQ (In-phase/Quadrature) mixer with a local oscillator and intermediate-frequency (IF) signals, we report an effective and technically simple method to generate the required microwave field by frequency multiplication and realize coherent manipulation of the NV center’s electron spin. After frequency multiplication, the IF signal can be directly converted to the high-frequency microwave field with adjustable pulse width, frequency, phase, and amplitude. A series of spin dynamics applications such as Rabi oscillation, free induction decay, and spin-locking are executed, which verified its performance and feasibility. Frequency multiplication can overcome the problem of clock synchronization between the local oscillator and IF signal and greatly reduce the complexity of the experimental system. The method can be easily used to realize a more complex quantum control sequence such as dynamic decoupling and extended to a wide range of spin-based quantum information applications in the future.

DOI
10.1063/5.0147534

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•Mar 1, 2014•1 citation
Nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond as ideally individual spin quantum systems can be coherently manipulated by microwave fields. Compared to the traditional method using the IQ (In-phase/Quadrature) mixer with a local oscillator and intermediate-frequency (IF) signals, we report an effective and technically simple method to generate the required microwave field by frequency multiplication and realize coherent manipulation of the NV center’s electron spin. After frequency multiplication, the IF signal can be directly converted to the high-frequency microwave field with adjustable pulse width, frequency, phase, and amplitude. A series of spin dynamics applications such as Rabi oscillation, free induction decay, and spin-locking are executed, which verified its performance and feasibility. Frequency multiplication can overcome the problem of clock synchronization between the local oscillator and IF signal and greatly reduce the complexity of the experimental system. The method can be easily used to realize a more complex quantum control sequence such as dynamic decoupling and extended to a wide range of spin-based quantum information applications in the future.
Nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond have been used as platforms for quantum information, magnetometry and imaging of microwave (MW) fields. The spatial distribution of the MW fields used to drive the electron spin of NV centers plays a key role for these applications. Here, we report a system for the control and characterization of MW magnetic fields used for the NV spin manipulation. The control of the MW field in the vicinity of a diamond surface is mediated by an exchangeable lumped resonator, coupled inductively to a MW planar ring antenna. The characterization of the MW fields in the near-field is performed by an FFT imaging of Rabi oscillations, by using an ensemble of NV centers. We have found that the Rabi frequency over a lumped resonator is enhanced 22 times compared to the Rabi frequency without the presence of the lumped resonator. Our system may find applications in quantum information and magnetometry where a precise and controlled spin manipulation is required, showing NV centers as good candidates for imaging MW fields and characterization of MW devices.
Abstract A nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in a diamond enables the access to an electron spin, which is expected to present highly sensitive quantum sensors. Although exploiting a nitrogen nuclear spin improves the sensitivity, manipulating it using a resonant pulse requires a long gate time owing to its small gyromagnetic ratio. Another technique to control nuclear spins is a conditional rotation gate based on dynamical decoupling, which is faster but unavailable for nitrogen spins owing to the lack of transverse hyperfine coupling with the electron spin. In this study, we generated effective transverse coupling by applying a weak off-axis magnetic field. An effective coupling depends on the off-axis field; the conditional rotation gate on the nitrogen-14 spins of an NV center was demonstrated within 4.2 μs under an 1.8% off-axis field and a longitudinal field of approximately 280 mT. We estimated that a population transfer from the electron to nitrogen spins can be implemented with 8.7 μs. Our method is applicable to an ensemble of NV centers, in addition to a single NV center.
High-resolution wide-spectrum measurement techniques have important applications in fields such as astronomy, wireless communication, and medical imaging. Nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond is well known for its high stability, high sensitivity, real-time monitoring, single-point detection, and suitability for long-term measurement, and has an outstanding choice for spectrum analyzers. Currently, spectrum analyzers based on NV centers as detectors can perform real-time spectrum analysis in the range of several tens of gigahertz, but their frequency resolution is limited to a MHz level. In this study, we construct a quantum diamond microwave spectrum imaging system by combining continuous wave-mixing techniques. According to the spin-related properties of the NV center in diamond, we implement optical pumping by 532 nm green laser light illuminating the diamond NV center. A spherical magnet is used to produce a magnetic field gradient along the direction of the diamond crystal. By adjusting the size and direction of the magnetic field gradient, spatial encoding of the resonance frequency of the NV center is achieved. The magnetic field gradient induces the Zeeman effect on the diamond surface at different positions, generating corresponding ODMR signals. Through accurate programming, we coordinate the frequency scanning step size of the microwave source with the camera exposure and image storage time, and synchronize them circularly according to the order of image acquisition. Ultimately, after algorithmic processing, we successfully obtain comprehensive spectrum data in a range from 900 MHz to 6.0 GHz. Within the measurable spectrum range, the system employs continuous wave-mixing, simultaneously applying resonant microwaves and slightly detuning auxiliary microwaves to effectively excite the NV center. This method triggers off microwave interference effects, disrupting the balance between laser-induced polarization and microwave-induced spontaneous relaxation. Specifically, microwave interference causes the phase and amplitude of the fluorescence signal to change, leading to the generation of alternating current fluorescence signals. This further enhances the response of the NV magnetometer to weak microwave signals. The method enables the system to achieve a frequency resolution of 1 Hz in the measurable spectrum range, and it can separately measure the frequency resolution of multiple frequency points with a frequency step size of 1 MHz. The research results indicate that the wide-spectrum measurement based on NV centers can achieve sub-hertz frequency resolution, providing robust technical support for future spectrum analysis and applications.
We investigate the spin dynamics of a nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center contained in an individual diamond nanocrystal in the presence of continuous microwave excitation. Upon periodic reversal of the microwave phase, we observe a train of ``Solomon echoes'' that effectively extends the system coherence lifetime to reach several tens of microseconds, depending on the microwave power and phase inversion rate. Starting from a model where the NV center interacts with a bath of paramagnetic defects on the nanocrystal surface, we use average Hamiltonian theory to compute the signal envelope from its amplitude at the echo maxima. A comparison between the effective Rabi and Solomon propagators shows that the observed response can be understood as a form of higher-order decoupling from the spin bath.
The nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center spin represents an appealing candidate for quantum information processing. Besides the widely used microwave control, its coherent manipulation may also be achieved using a laser as mediated by the excited energy levels. Nevertheless, the multiple levels of the excited state of the NV center spin make the coherent transition process become complex and may affect the fidelity of coherent manipulation. Here, we adopt the strategy of optimal quantum control to accelerate coherent-state transfer in the ground-state manifold of the NV center spin using a laser. The results demonstrate improved performance in both the speed and the fidelity of coherent-state transfer which will be useful for optical control of the NV center spin in diamond.
During the last ten years, basic quantum operations on a single electronic spins in the nitrogen-vacancy defect center in diamond have been a rich field of study. Quantum operations coherently manipulating the spin of the nitrogen-vacancy center have become promising candidates for easy to manipulate qubits. However in order to implement these qubits in quantum computers robust high-fidelity control is needed. Building on an existing confocal microscopy setup, pulsed and quadrature-amplitude modulated microwave signals were used to realize coherent spin manipulation measurements. Especially designed Smooth Optimal Control pulses (robust against detuning and different control amplitudes) were used to develop measurement schemes resulting in the aforementioned increase of fidelity. The first part of the thesis describes the implementation of these pulses into the existing experimental setup and the calibration work necessary prior to measurements, due to imperfections of devices in the microwave chain. The second part is dedicated to the analysis of the pulses applied to a single spin by comparing the experimental results to theoretical simulations. This was done not only for one resonant spin with accurate control amplitude, but also for a range of different detunings and amplitudes. A more thorough analysis of the pulses was then achieved by using state/process tomography, resulting in a complete description of the process induced by these optimized pulses. Finally, after verifying the effect of the pulses, measurement schemes for sensing alternating magnetic fields were implemented, resulting in measurements with improved sensitivity for magnetic fields.