128 research outputs found
Medical applications of diamond magnetometry: commercial viability
The sensing of magnetic fields has important applications in medicine,
particularly to the sensing of signals in the heart and brain. The fields
associated with biomagnetism are exceptionally weak, being many orders of
magnitude smaller than the Earth's magnetic field. To measure them requires
that we use the most sensitive detection techniques, however, to be
commercially viable this must be done at an affordable cost. The current state
of the art uses costly SQUID magnetometers, although they will likely be
superseded by less costly, but otherwise limited, alkali vapour magnetometers.
Here, we discuss the application of diamond magnetometers to medical
applications. Diamond magnetometers are robust, solid state devices that work
in a broad range of environments, with the potential for sensitivity comparable
to the leading technologies.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figur
Medical applications of diamond magnetometry : commercial viability
The sensing of magnetic fields has important applications in medicine, particularly to the sensing of signals in the heart and brain. The fields associated with biomagnetism are exceptionally weak, being many orders of magnitude smaller than the Earth's magnetic field. To measure them requires that we use the most sensitive detection techniques, however, to be commercially viable this must be done at an affordable cost. The current state of the art uses costly SQUID magnetometers, although they will likely be superseded by less costly, but otherwise limited, alkali vapour magnetometers. Here, we discuss the application of diamond magnetometers to medical applications. Diamond magnetometers are robust, solid state devices that work in a broad range of environments, with the potential for sensitivity comparable to the leading technologies
Motional dynamical decoupling for interferometry with macroscopic particles
We extend the concept of dynamical decoupling from spin to mechanical degrees of freedom of macroscopic objects, for application in interferometry. In this manner, the superposition of matter waves can be made resilient to many important sources of noise when these are driven along suitable paths in space. As a concrete implementation, we present the case of levitated (or free falling) nanodiamonds hosting a color center in a magnetic field gradient. We point out that these interferometers are inherently affected by diamagnetic forces, which restrict the separation of the superposed states to distances that scale with the inverse of the magnetic field gradient. Periodic forcing of the mechanical degree of freedom is shown to overcome this limitation, achieving a linear-in-time growth of the separation distance independent of the magnetic field gradient, while simultaneously protecting the coherence of the superposition from environmental perturbations
Classical computation by quantum bits
Atomic-scale logic and the minimization of heating (dissipation) are both very high on the agenda for future computation hardware. An approach to achieve these would be to replace networks of transistors directly by classical reversible logic gates built from the coherent dynamics of a few interacting atoms. As superpositions are unnecessary before and after each such gate (inputs and outputs are bits), the dephasing time only needs to exceed a single gate operation time, while fault tolerance should be achieved with low overhead, by classical coding. Such gates could thus be a spin-off of quantum technology much before full-scale quantum computation. Thus motivated, we propose methods to realize the 3-bit Toffoli and Fredkin gates universal for classical reversible logic using a single time-independent 3-qubit Hamiltonian with realistic nearest neighbour two-body interactions. We also exemplify how these gates can be composed to make a larger circuit. We show that trapped ions may soon be scalable simulators for such architectures, and investigate the prospects with dopants in silicon
Mesoscopic Interference for Metric and Curvature (MIMAC) & Gravitational Wave Detection
A compact detector for space-time metric and curvature is highly desirable.
Here we show that quantum spatial superpositions of mesoscopic objects, of the
type which would in principle become possible with a combination of state of
the art techniques and taking into account the known sources of decoherence,
could be exploited to create such a detector. By using Stern-Gerlach (SG)
interferometry with masses much larger than atoms, where the interferometric
signal is extracted by measuring spins, we show that accelerations as low as
or better, as well as the
frame dragging effects caused by the Earth, could be sensed. Constructing such
an apparatus to be non-symmetric would also enable the direct detection of
curvature and gravitational waves (GWs). The GW sensitivity scales differently
from the stray acceleration sensitivity, a unique feature of MIMAC. We have
identified mitigation mechanisms for the known sources of noise, namely Gravity
Gradient Noise (GGN), uncertainty principle and electro-magnetic forces. Hence
it could potentially lead to a meter sized, orientable and vibrational noise
(thermal/seismic) resilient detector of mid (ground based) and low (space
based) frequency GWs from massive binaries (the predicted regimes are similar
to those targeted by atom interferometers and LISA).Comment: 29 pages, 3 figure
Laser writing of individual atomic defects in a crystal with near-unity yield
Atomic defects in wide band gap materials show great promise for development
of a new generation of quantum information technologies, but have been hampered
by the inability to produce and engineer the defects in a controlled way. The
nitrogen-vacancy (NV) color center in diamond is one of the foremost
candidates, with single defects allowing optical addressing of electron spin
and nuclear spin degrees of freedom with potential for applications in advanced
sensing and computing. Here we demonstrate a method for the deterministic
writing of individual NV centers at selected locations with high positioning
accuracy using laser processing with online fluorescence feedback. This method
provides a new tool for the fabrication of engineered materials and devices for
quantum technologies and offers insight into the diffusion dynamics of point
defects in solids.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figure
Quantum control of hybrid nuclear-electronic qubits
Pulsed magnetic resonance is a wide-reaching technology allowing the quantum
state of electronic and nuclear spins to be controlled on the timescale of
nanoseconds and microseconds respectively. The time required to flip either
dilute electronic or nuclear spins is orders of magnitude shorter than their
decoherence times, leading to several schemes for quantum information
processing with spin qubits. We investigate instead the novel regime where the
eigenstates approximate 50:50 superpositions of the electronic and nuclear spin
states forming "hybrid nuclear-electronic" qubits. Here we demonstrate quantum
control of these states for the first time, using bismuth-doped silicon, in
just 32 ns: this is orders of magnitude faster than previous experiments where
pure nuclear states were used. The coherence times of our states are five
orders of magnitude longer, reaching 4 ms, and are limited by the
naturally-occurring 29Si nuclear spin impurities. There is quantitative
agreement between our experiments and no-free-parameter analytical theory for
the resonance positions, as well as their relative intensities and relative
Rabi oscillation frequencies. In experiments where the slow manipulation of
some of the qubits is the rate limiting step, quantum computations would
benefit from faster operation in the hybrid regime.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures, new data and simulation
Long Spin Coherence and Relaxation Times in Nanodiamonds Milled from Polycrystalline C Diamond
The negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy centre (NV) in diamond has been
utilized in a wide variety of sensing applications. The centre's long spin
coherence and relaxation times (, and ) at room temperature
are crucial to this, as they often limit sensitivity. Using NV centres in
nanodiamonds allows for operations in environments inaccessible to bulk
diamond, such as intracellular sensing. We report long spin coherence and
relaxation times at room temperature for single NV centres in
isotopically-purified polycrystalline ball-milled nanodiamonds. Using a
spin-locking pulse sequence, we observe spin coherence times, , up 786
200 s. We also measure times up to 2.06 0.24 s
and times up to 4.32 0.60 ms. Scanning electron microscopy and
atomic force microscopy measurements show that the diamond containing the
NV centre with the longest time is smaller than 100 nm. EPR
measurements give an N concentration of 0.15 0.02 ppm for the
nanodiamond sample.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure
Subnanotesla magnetometry with a fiber-coupled diamond sensor
Nitrogen-vacancy centers (NVCs) in diamond are being explored for future quantum technologies, and in particular ensembles of NVC are the basis for sensitive magnetometers. We present a fiber-coupled NVC magnetometer with an unshielded sensitivity of (310±20)pT/√Hz in the frequency range of 10–150 Hz at room temperature. This takes advantage of low-strain 12C diamond, lenses for fiber coupling and optimization of microwave modulation frequency, modulation amplitude, and power. Fiber coupling means the sensor can be conveniently brought within 2 mm of the object under study
- …