Optically detected nuclear magnetic resonance of carbon-13 in bulk diamond

Abstract

Precision measurements based on optically detected nuclear magnetic resonance offer exquisite sensitivity to absolute shifts in spin transition frequencies, with potential applications in fundamental physics experiments and inertial sensing. We investigate 13C nuclear spins in diamond as a candidate system for solid-state implementations, which hold the promise for high-fidelity readout of large numbers of coherent nuclear spins in millitesla or lower magnetic fields. We demonstrate a technique that allows for both optical polarization and readout of large ensembles of ~10^{16} polarized nuclear spins. Our method takes advantage of state-selective Landau-Zener transitions under microwave frequency sweeping, which bidirectionally transfer spin polarization between Nitrogen-Vacancy (NV) electron spins and remote 13C nuclear spins. Using natural isotopic abundance diamonds with nitrogen densities of ~0.5-10 ppm, we perform optically-detected 13C Ramsey spectroscopy and realize a nuclear-spin-dependent fluorescence contrast exceeding 0.5% peak-to-peak. We observe nuclear spin dephasing times T2*~2 ms that only modestly improve with homonuclear dipolar decoupling, indicating that they are limited by the longitudinal spin relaxation of nearby NV electron spins. We study the magnetic field dependence of the optical readout and find comparable contrast and dephasing times for magnetic fields in the range 8-20 mT. Our method can be interpreted as a type of repetitive readout, where each NV center optically reads out the spin state of ~10^2 nuclei before nuclear spins depolarize.

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BibTeX RIS

BibTeX

@misc{aiello2026optically,
  title = {{Optically detected nuclear magnetic resonance of carbon-13 in bulk diamond}},
  author = {Maxwell D. Aiello and Janis Smits and Yaser Silani and Andris Berzins and David Lidsky and Bryan A. Richards and Amilcar Jeronimo Perez and Chandrasekhar Ramanathan and Sebastián C. Carrasco and Jabir Chathanathil and Michael Goerz and Vladimir S. Malinovsky and Dmitry Budker and Sean Lourette and Andrey Jarmola and Victor M. Acosta},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = sep,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2605.00152},
  eprint = {2605.00152},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.00152},
}

RIS

TY  - UNPB
TI  - Optically detected nuclear magnetic resonance of carbon-13 in bulk diamond
AU  - Maxwell D. Aiello
AU  - Janis Smits
AU  - Yaser Silani
AU  - Andris Berzins
AU  - David Lidsky
AU  - Bryan A. Richards
AU  - Amilcar Jeronimo Perez
AU  - Chandrasekhar Ramanathan
AU  - Sebastián C. Carrasco
AU  - Jabir Chathanathil
AU  - Michael Goerz
AU  - Vladimir S. Malinovsky
AU  - Dmitry Budker
AU  - Sean Lourette
AU  - Andrey Jarmola
AU  - Victor M. Acosta
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/26
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2605.00152
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.00152
AB  - Precision measurements based on optically detected nuclear magnetic resonance offer exquisite sensitivity to absolute shifts in spin transition frequencies, with potential applications in fundamental physics experiments and inertial sensing. We investigate 13C nuclear spins in diamond as a candidate system for solid-state implementations, which hold the promise for high-fidelity readout of large numbers of coherent nuclear spins in millitesla or lower magnetic fields. We demonstrate a technique that allows for both optical polarization and readout of large ensembles of ~10^{16} polarized nuclear spins. Our method takes advantage of state-selective Landau-Zener transitions under microwave frequency sweeping, which bidirectionally transfer spin polarization between Nitrogen-Vacancy (NV) electron spins and remote 13C nuclear spins. Using natural isotopic abundance diamonds with nitrogen densities of ~0.5-10 ppm, we perform optically-detected 13C Ramsey spectroscopy and realize a nuclear-spin-dependent fluorescence contrast exceeding 0.5% peak-to-peak. We observe nuclear spin dephasing times T2*~2 ms that only modestly improve with homonuclear dipolar decoupling, indicating that they are limited by the longitudinal spin relaxation of nearby NV electron spins. We study the magnetic field dependence of the optical readout and find comparable contrast and dephasing times for magnetic fields in the range 8-20 mT. Our method can be interpreted as a type of repetitive readout, where each NV center optically reads out the spin state of ~10^2 nuclei before nuclear spins depolarize.
ER  -

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