Picotesla magnetometry of microwave fields with diamond sensors

Abstract

Developing robust microwave-field sensors is both fundamentally and practically important with a wide range of applications from astronomy to communication engineering. The Nitrogen-Vacancy (NV) center in diamond is an attractive candidate for such purpose because of its magnetometric sensitivity, stability and compatibility with ambient conditions. However, the existing NV center-based magnetometers have limited sensitivity in the microwave band. Here we present a continuous heterodyne detection method that can enhance the sensor's response to weak microwaves, even in the absence of spin controls. Experimentally, we achieve a sensitivity of 8.9 pT$\cdot$Hz${}^{-1/2}$ for microwaves of 2.9 GHz by simultaneously using an ensemble of $n_{\text{NV}}\sim 2.8\times 10^{13}$ NV centers within a sensor volume of $4\times 10^{-2}$ mm${}^3$. Besides, we also achieve $1/t$ scaling of frequency resolution up to measurement time $t$ of 10000 s. Our method removes the control pulses and thus will greatly benefit the practical application of diamond-based microwave sensors.

7 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (10)

• High-sensitivity diamond magnetometer with nanoscale resolution
• Sub-millihertz magnetic spectroscopy with a nanoscale quantum sensor
• Quantum sensing with arbitrary frequency resolution
• Chromatic periodic activity down to 120 MHz in a Fast Radio Burst
• Diamond magnetometry and gradiometry towards subpicotesla DC field measurement
• Heterodyne Sensing of Microwaves with a Quantum Sensor
• Narrow-bandwidth sensing of high-frequency fields with continuous dynamical decoupling
• Nanoscale zero-field electron spin resonance spectroscopy
• Electron-electron double resonance detected NMR spectroscopy using ensemble NV centers at 230 GHz and 8.3 Tesla
• High-Tc superconducting detector for highly-sensitive microwave magnetometry

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• Single NV Centers as Sensors for Radio-Frequency Fields
• Efficient fabrication of high-density ensembles of color centers via ion implantation on a hot diamond substrate
• Bayesian-based hybrid method for rapid optimization of NV center sensors
• Demonstration of highly-sensitive wideband microwave sensing using ensemble nitrogen-vacancy centers
• Radiofrequency receiver based on isotropic solid-state spins
• Wideband Coherent Microwave Conversion via Magnon Nonlinearity in Hybrid Quantum System
• Quantum Sensing Enhancement through a Nuclear Spin Register in Nitrogen-Vacancy Centers in Diamond
• Continuous drive heterodyne microwave sensing with spin qubits in hexagonal boron nitride
• Parallel accelerated electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy using diamond sensors
• Quantum sensing of time-dependent magnetic signals with molecular spins
• Four-order power reduction in nanoscale electron-nuclear double resonance with a nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond
• Robust gigahertz-range ac magnetometry with an ensemble of NV centers in diamond using concatenated continuous dynamical decoupling
• Imaging of microwave magnetic field orientation using continuous-wave experiments on nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond