Nuclear quadrupole resonance spectroscopy with a femtotesla diamond magnetometer.

Yaser Silani, Janis Smits, Ilja Fescenko, Michael W Malone, Andrew F McDowell, Andrey Jarmola, Pauli Kehayias, Bryan A Richards, Nazanin Mosavian, Nathaniel Ristoff, Victor M Acosta

Science advances 2023 Jun 16

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Radio frequency (RF) magnetometers based on nitrogen vacancy centers in diamond are predicted to offer femtotesla sensitivity, but previous experiments were limited to the picotesla level. We demonstrate a femtotesla RF magnetometer using a diamond membrane inserted between ferrite flux concentrators. The device provides ~300-fold amplitude enhancement for RF magnetic fields from 70 kHz to 3.6 MHz, and the sensitivity reaches ~70 fT√s at 0.35 MHz. The sensor detected the 3.6-MHz nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR) of room-temperature sodium nitrite powder. The sensor's recovery time after an RF pulse is ~35 μs, limited by the excitation coil's ring-down time. The sodium-nitrite NQR frequency shifts with temperature as -1.00±0.02 kHz/K, the magnetization dephasing time is T2*=887±51 μs, and multipulse sequences extend the signal lifetime to 332±23 ms, all consistent with coil-based studies. Our results expand the sensitivity frontier of diamond magnetometers to the femtotesla range, with potential applications in security, medical imaging, and materials science.

Citation

Yaser Silani, Janis Smits, Ilja Fescenko, Michael W Malone, Andrew F McDowell, Andrey Jarmola, Pauli Kehayias, Bryan A Richards, Nazanin Mosavian, Nathaniel Ristoff, Victor M Acosta. Nuclear quadrupole resonance spectroscopy with a femtotesla diamond magnetometer. Science advances. 2023 Jun 16;9(24):eadh3189