Imaging the Local Charge Environment of Nitrogen-Vacancy Centers in Diamond

Characterizing the local internal environment surrounding solid-state spin defects is crucial to harnessing them as nanoscale sensors of external fields. This is especially germane to the case of defect ensembles which can exhibit a complex interplay between interactions, internal fields, and lattic...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review letters 2018-12, Vol.121 (24)
Main Authors: Mittiga, T., Hsieh, S., Zu, C., Kobrin, B., Machado, F., Bhattacharyya, P., Rui, N. Z., Jarmola, A., Choi, S., Budker, D., Yao, N. Y.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS
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Summary:Characterizing the local internal environment surrounding solid-state spin defects is crucial to harnessing them as nanoscale sensors of external fields. This is especially germane to the case of defect ensembles which can exhibit a complex interplay between interactions, internal fields, and lattice strain. Working with the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond, we show that local electric fields dominate the magnetic resonance behavior of NV ensembles at a low magnetic field. We propose a simple microscopic model that quantitatively captures the observed spectra for samples with NV concentrations spanning more than two orders of magnitude. Motivated by this understanding, we propose and implement a new method for the nanoscale localization of individual charges within the diamond lattice; our approach relies upon the fact that the charge induces a NV dark state which depends on the electric field orientation.
ISSN:0031-9007
1079-7114