High-Resolution Correlation Spectroscopy of 13C Spins Near a Nitrogen-Vacancy Center in Diamond

TL;DR

This study employs a pulse protocol to analyze 13C nuclear spins near a nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond, revealing long-lived correlations, hyperfine interactions, and magnetic field-dependent dynamics, advancing quantum spin system understanding.

Contribution

It introduces a method to monitor 13C spin dynamics near NV centers with high precision, including hyperfine-resolved spectroscopy and magnetic field effects analysis.

Findings

Long-lived nuclear spin correlations limited by NV relaxation

Hyperfine-shifted resonances can be distinguished via NV initialization

Correlation amplitude sharply depends on applied magnetic field

Abstract

Spin complexes comprising the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center and neighboring spins are being considered as a building block for a new generation of spintronic and quantum information processing devices. Because assembling identical spin clusters is difficult, new strategies are in order to determine individual node structures with the highest precision. Here we use a pulse protocol to monitor the time evolution of the 13C ensemble in the vicinity of a NV center. We observe long-lived time correlations in the nuclear spin dynamics, limited by NV spin-lattice relaxation. We use the host 14N spin as a quantum register, and demonstrate that hyperfine-shifted resonances can be separated upon proper NV initialization. Intriguingly, we find that the amplitude of the correlation signal exhibits a sharp dependence on the applied magnetic field. We discuss this observation in the context of the quantum-to-classical transition proposed recently to explain the field dependence of the spin cluster dynamics.