Hamburg 2009 – scientific programme

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SYDD: Defect centers in diamond for applications in quantum optics and nanophotonics

SYDD 2: Defect centers in diamond for applications in quantum optics and nanophotonics II

SYDD 2.1: Invited Talk

Friday, March 6, 2009, 14:00–14:30, Audi-B

Experimental investigation of optically detected magnetic resonance of multiple and single NV spin in diamond — Ngoc Diep Lai¹, Dingwei Zheng¹, Fedor Jelezko², •François Treussart¹, and Jean-François Roch¹ — ¹Laboratoire de Photonique Quantique et Moléculaire, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan and CNRS UMR 8537, 94235 Cachan cedex, France — ²3. Physikalisches Institut, Universität Stuttgart, 70550 Stuttgart, Germany

We investigate electron spin resonance of single Nitrogen-Vacancy (NV) color center in a diamond nanocrystal (size ∼50 nm) and resonances of multiple NV centers laying in their four possible directions in a bulk diamond crystal. The magnetic resonance frequencies vary differently depending on the amplitude and the orientation of the applied magnetic field with respect to spins in each direction. While the orientations of NV spins in a bulk diamond is known from crystal axis, a single NV spin in a nanocrystal is randomly oriented, depending on deposition on the substrate. We report a double measurement method to accurately determine the orientation of an arbitrary single spin, by varying the amplitude and the orientation of an external magnetic field. In addition, we found that the lifetime of a single NV center or the average lifetime of multiple NV centers also varies with the external magnetic field. This lifetime variation can be explained by the mixing between m_S=0 and m_S=± 1 electron spin states, as a function of the applied magnetic field. Lifetime-based detection appears to be an efficient method to increase the contrast of magnetic resonance. This result is of importance for applications such as spin-resonance-based magnetometry.