Solid Immersion Facilitates Fluorescence Microscopy with Nanometer Resolution and Sub-Angstrom Emitter Localization

摘要

Standard far-field optical microscopy techniques provide non-invasive access to the interior of transparent samples, albeit with a resolution that is constrained to about half of the wavelength of light γ. By providing a resolution that is no longer limited by diffraction, emerging far-field optical nanoscopy or superresolution techniques are transforming the life sciences, but have also implications in the material and information sciences. Exemplifying the latter are concepts for quantum computation relying on point defects in a closely spaced crystal lattice forming coupled quantum systems. A candidate for such a system is the negatively charged nitrogen vacancy (NV) point defect in diamond, which consists of a lattice vacancy located next to a substitutional nitrogen. The NV center displays remarkable properties as a spin register, combining long coherence times at room temperature with convenient means for optical and microwave initialization followed by fluorescence-based read-out. Recent works have shown that the spin states of NV centers separated ＜ 10 nm apart can communicate with each other on sub-microsecond time scales, which is sufficiently fast to envisage an array of entangled quantum systems as a crucial step towards a quantum processor.