Negatively charged boron vacancies (VB−) in hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) comprise a promising quantum sensing platform, optically addressable at room temperature and transferrable onto samples. However, broad hyperfine-split spin transitions of the ensemble pose challenges for quantum sensing with conventional resonant excitation due to limited spectral coverage. While isotopically enriched hBN using 10B and 15N isotopes (h10B15N) exhibits sharper spectral features, significant inhomogeneous broadening persists. We demonstrate that, implemented via frequency modulation on an FPGA, a frequency-ramped microwave pulse achieves around 4-fold greater ∣0⟩→∣−1⟩ spin-state population transfer and thus contrast than resonant microwave excitation and thus 16-fold shorter measurement time for spin relaxation based quantum sensing. Quantum dynamics simulations reveal that an effective two-state Landau-Zener model captures the complex relationship between population inversion and pulse length with relaxations incorporated. Our approach is robust and valuable for quantum relaxometry with spin defects in hBN in noisy environments.
@article{arxiv.2601.05013,
title = {Landau Zener Interaction Enhanced Quantum Sensing in Spin Defects of Hexagonal Boron Nitride},
author = {Mohammad Abdullah Sadi and Tiamike Dudley and Luca Basso and Thomas Poirier and James H. Edgar and Jacob Henshaw and Peter A. Bermel and Yong P. Chen and Andrew Mounce},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.05013},
year = {2026}
}