Electron spins in solids constitute remarkable quantum sensors. Individual defect centers in diamond were used to detect individual nuclear spins with nanometer scale resolution, and ensemble magnetometers rival SQUID and vapor cell magnetometers when taking into account room temperature operation and size. NV center spins can also detect electric field vectors, despite their weak coupling to electric fields. %even that of an isolated fundamental charge, despite their weak coupling to electric fields. Here, we employ ensembles of NV center spins to measure macroscopic AC electric vector fields with high precision. We utilize low strain, 12C enriched diamond to achieve maximum sensitivity and tailor the spin Hamiltonian via proper magnetic field adjustment to map out the AC electric field strength and polarization and arrive at refined electric field coupling constants. For high precision measurements we combine classical lock-in detection with aspects from quantum phase estimation for effective suppression of technical noise. Eventually, this enables t−1/2 uncertainty scaling of the electric field strength over extended averaging periods, enabling us to reach a sensitivity down to 10−7 V/μm.
@article{arxiv.1901.01614,
title = {Robust and accurate electric field sensing with solid state spin ensembles},
author = {Julia Michl and Jakob Steiner and Andrej Denisenko and Andre Buelau and Andre Zimmermann and Kazuo Nakamura and Hitoshi Sumiya and Shinobu Onoda and Philipp Neumann and Junichi Isoya and Joerg Wrachtrup},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1901.01614},
year = {2019}
}