247 research outputs found
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Nanometre-scale thermometry in a living cell
Sensitive probing of temperature variations on nanometre scales is an outstanding challenge in many areas of modern science and technology. In particular, a thermometer capable of subdegree temperature resolution over a large range of temperatures as well as integration within a living system could provide a powerful new tool in many areas of biological, physical and chemical research. Possibilities range from the temperature-induced control of gene expression and tumour metabolism to the cell-selective treatment of disease and the study of heat dissipation in integrated circuits. By combining local light-induced heat sources with sensitive nanoscale thermometry, it may also be possible to engineer biological processes at the subcellular level. Here we demonstrate a new approach to nanoscale thermometry that uses coherent manipulation of the electronic spin associated with nitrogen–vacancy colour centres in diamond. Our technique makes it possible to detect temperature variations as small as 1.8 mK (a sensitivity of in an ultrapure bulk diamond sample. Using nitrogen–vacancy centres in diamond nanocrystals (nanodiamonds), we directly measure the local thermal environment on length scales as short as 200 nanometres. Finally, by introducing both nanodiamonds and gold nanoparticles into a single human embryonic fibroblast, we demonstrate temperature-gradient control and mapping at the subcellular level, enabling unique potential applications in life sciences.Physic
Terahertz thermometry: combining hyperspectral imaging and temperature mapping at terahertz frequencies
The accurate and non-invasive determination of multiple physical parameters, with well-defined spatial resolution, is crucial for applications in manufacturing, chemistry, medicine and biology. Specifically, the ability to simultaneously measure both temperature and spectral signatures is still experimentally unavailable. To this end, we propose a mapping technique for biological systems, which exploits a linear correlation between terahertz wave reflectivity and temperature, and allows to spatially and spectrally resolve thermal distributions. This method is applied to a model biological system in two relevant cases where in one example, nanoplasmonic-induced photothermal effects are imaged gaining new insights into collective heating phenomena. In the second example, we demonstrate a joint thermal-hyperspectral imaging approach to chemically map the presence of a model drug formulation and simultaneously investigate its thermal stability in our biological system. This concept can be easily extended and widely applied to all materials that demonstrate a measurable change in their dielectric properties
Room-Temperature Quantum Bit Memory Exceeding One Second
Stable quantum bits, capable both of storing quantum information for macroscopic time scales and of integration inside small portable devices, are an essential building block for an array of potential applications. We demonstrate high-fidelity control of a solid-state qubit, which preserves its polarization for several minutes and features coherence lifetimes exceeding 1 second at room temperature. The qubit consists of a single ^(13)C nuclear spin in the vicinity of a nitrogen-vacancy color center within an isotopically purified diamond crystal. The long qubit memory time was achieved via a technique involving dissipative decoupling of the single nuclear spin from its local environment. The versatility, robustness, and potential scalability of this system may allow for new applications in quantum information science
Recommended from our members
Room-Temperature Quantum Bit Memory Exceeding One Second
Stable quantum bits, capable both of storing quantum information for macroscopic time scales and of integration inside small portable devices, are an essential building block for an array of potential applications. We demonstrate high-fidelity control of a solid-state qubit, which preserves its polarization for several minutes and features coherence lifetimes exceeding 1 second at room temperature. The qubit consists of a single nuclear spin in the vicinity of a nitrogen-vacancy color center within an isotopically purified diamond crystal. The long qubit memory time was achieved via a technique involving dissipative decoupling of the single nuclear spin from its local environment. The versatility, robustness, and potential scalability of this system may allow for new applications in quantum information science.Physic
Observation of discrete time-crystalline order in a disordered dipolar many-body system
Understanding quantum dynamics away from equilibrium is an outstanding
challenge in the modern physical sciences. It is well known that
out-of-equilibrium systems can display a rich array of phenomena, ranging from
self-organized synchronization to dynamical phase transitions. More recently,
advances in the controlled manipulation of isolated many-body systems have
enabled detailed studies of non-equilibrium phases in strongly interacting
quantum matter. As a particularly striking example, the interplay of periodic
driving, disorder, and strong interactions has recently been predicted to
result in exotic "time-crystalline" phases, which spontaneously break the
discrete time-translation symmetry of the underlying drive. Here, we report the
experimental observation of such discrete time-crystalline order in a driven,
disordered ensemble of dipolar spin impurities in diamond at
room-temperature. We observe long-lived temporal correlations at integer
multiples of the fundamental driving period, experimentally identify the phase
boundary and find that the temporal order is protected by strong interactions;
this order is remarkably stable against perturbations, even in the presence of
slow thermalization. Our work opens the door to exploring dynamical phases of
matter and controlling interacting, disordered many-body systems.Comment: 6 + 3 pages, 4 figure
Probing and manipulating embryogenesis via nanoscale thermometry and temperature control
Understanding the coordination of cell division timing is one of the
outstanding questions in the field of developmental biology. One active control
parameter of the cell cycle duration is temperature, as it can accelerate or
decelerate the rate of biochemical reactions. However, controlled experiments
at the cellular-scale are challenging due to the limited availability of
biocompatible temperature sensors as well as the lack of practical methods to
systematically control local temperatures and cellular dynamics. Here, we
demonstrate a method to probe and control the cell division timing in
Caenorhabditis elegans embryos using a combination of local laser heating and
nanoscale thermometry. Local infrared laser illumination produces a temperature
gradient across the embryo, which is precisely measured by in-vivo nanoscale
thermometry using quantum defects in nanodiamonds. These techniques enable
selective, controlled acceleration of the cell divisions, even enabling an
inversion of division order at the two cell stage. Our data suggest that the
cell cycle timing asynchrony of the early embryonic development in C. elegans
is determined independently by individual cells rather than via cell-to-cell
communication. Our method can be used to control the development of
multicellular organisms and to provide insights into the regulation of cell
division timings as a consequence of local perturbations.Comment: 6+6 pages, 4+9 figure
Fourier Magnetic Imaging with Nanoscale Resolution and Compressed Sensing Speed-up using Electronic Spins in Diamond
Optically-detected magnetic resonance using Nitrogen Vacancy (NV) color
centres in diamond is a leading modality for nanoscale magnetic field imaging,
as it provides single electron spin sensitivity, three-dimensional resolution
better than 1 nm, and applicability to a wide range of physical and biological
samples under ambient conditions. To date, however, NV-diamond magnetic imaging
has been performed using real space techniques, which are either limited by
optical diffraction to 250 nm resolution or require slow, point-by-point
scanning for nanoscale resolution, e.g., using an atomic force microscope,
magnetic tip, or super-resolution optical imaging. Here we introduce an
alternative technique of Fourier magnetic imaging using NV-diamond. In analogy
with conventional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), we employ pulsed magnetic
field gradients to phase-encode spatial information on NV electronic spins in
wavenumber or k-space followed by a fast Fourier transform to yield real-space
images with nanoscale resolution, wide field-of-view (FOV), and compressed
sensing speed-up.Comment: 31 pages, 10 figure
Nonclassical Light Generation from III-V and Group-IV Solid-State Cavity Quantum Systems
In this chapter, we present the state-of-the-art in the generation of
nonclassical states of light using semiconductor cavity quantum electrodynamics
(QED) platforms. Our focus is on the photon blockade effects that enable the
generation of indistinguishable photon streams with high purity and efficiency.
Starting with the leading platform of InGaAs quantum dots in optical
nanocavities, we review the physics of a single quantum emitter strongly
coupled to a cavity. Furthermore, we propose a complete model for photon
blockade and tunneling in III-V quantum dot cavity QED systems. Turning toward
quantum emitters with small inhomogeneous broadening, we propose a direction
for novel experiments for nonclassical light generation based on group-IV
color-center systems. We present a model of a multi-emitter cavity QED
platform, which features richer dressed-states ladder structures, and show how
it can offer opportunities for studying new regimes of high-quality photon
blockade.Comment: 64 pages, 32 figures, to appear as Chapter 3 in Advances in Atomic
Molecular and Optical Physics, Vol. 6
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