The Impact of Internal Electric Fields on Accurate Diamond Magnetometry
Abstract
Nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center spin ensembles are a promising platform for accurate vector magnetometry, as they offer measurements referenced to a spin Hamiltonian in an anisotropic crystal with native vector sensing capabilities. However, charged dopants within the diamond produce random internal electric fields (RIEFs) that shift NV spin-transition frequencies, and their impact on the accuracy of NV magnetometry has not been investigated. Here, we characterize RIEFs' effect on NV spin-transition spectra and propose an analytical fitting function to improve accuracy in their presence. We build a Monte Carlo RIEF model that reproduces the asymmetric lineshapes observed in experimental optically detected magnetic resonance (ODMR) spectra, and use it as a testbed to quantify RIEF-induced errors by simulating ODMR spectra including RIEFs and comparing reconstructed magnetic fields to the known model input. With standard analysis approaches, we observe systematic errors exceeding the g-factor uncertainty in fields below ∼ 5 mT, while the proposed fitting function reduces the error by nearly an order of magnitude. Our results demonstrate that RIEFs can play a significant role in the systematic error budget for NV magnetometry, and offer a path towards improved accuracy in NV quantum sensing.
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BibTeX
@misc{faller2026impact,
title = {{The Impact of Internal Electric Fields on Accurate Diamond Magnetometry}},
author = {Jack Faller and Daphne Freda Gavras and Andrew Lowther and Romain Ruhlmann and Lilian Childress},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2611.03984},
eprint = {2611.03984},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.03984},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - The Impact of Internal Electric Fields on Accurate Diamond Magnetometry
AU - Jack Faller
AU - Daphne Freda Gavras
AU - Andrew Lowther
AU - Romain Ruhlmann
AU - Lilian Childress
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/02
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2611.03984
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.03984
AB - Nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center spin ensembles are a promising platform for accurate vector magnetometry, as they offer measurements referenced to a spin Hamiltonian in an anisotropic crystal with native vector sensing capabilities. However, charged dopants within the diamond produce random internal electric fields (RIEFs) that shift NV spin-transition frequencies, and their impact on the accuracy of NV magnetometry has not been investigated. Here, we characterize RIEFs' effect on NV spin-transition spectra and propose an analytical fitting function to improve accuracy in their presence. We build a Monte Carlo RIEF model that reproduces the asymmetric lineshapes observed in experimental optically detected magnetic resonance (ODMR) spectra, and use it as a testbed to quantify RIEF-induced errors by simulating ODMR spectra including RIEFs and comparing reconstructed magnetic fields to the known model input. With standard analysis approaches, we observe systematic errors exceeding the g-factor uncertainty in fields below ∼ 5 mT, while the proposed fitting function reduces the error by nearly an order of magnitude. Our results demonstrate that RIEFs can play a significant role in the systematic error budget for NV magnetometry, and offer a path towards improved accuracy in NV quantum sensing.
ER -