Nitrogen vacancy (NV) color centers in diamond are atomic-scale quantum defects with long-lived electronic spin states that can be prepared and read-out with optically-detected magnetic resonance (ODMR). In recent years, NV-diamond has attracted intense interest as precision quantum sensors with wide-ranging applications in both the physical and life sciences. Most prominently, NV-diamond has been shown to provide a combination of magnetic field sensitivity and nanoscale spatial resolution that is unmatched by any existing technology - including SQUIDs, atomic magnetometers, and magnetic resonance force microscopy - while operating over a wide range of temperatures from cryogenic to well above room temperature in a robust, solid-state system [Taylor2008, Childress2014]. Importantly, since NV centers are atomic-sized defects and can be localized very close to the diamond surface, they can be brought to within a few nanometers of the sample of interest, greatly enhancing the sample's magnetic field at the position of the NV sensor (e.g., dipole fields fall off as 1/r~3) and enabling nanometer scale resolution. In addition, NV centers can be fabricated within diamond crystals at high densities up to~ 1/(5 nm)~3, allowing ensemble sensitivity ~10 pT/Hz~(1/2) [Barry2016] as well as wide-field magnetic imaging [LeSage2013, Glenn2015].
展开▼
