Characterization of hyperfine interaction between single electron and single nuclear spins in diamond assisted by quantum beat from the nuclear spin

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new method using quantum beat phenomena to precisely characterize hyperfine interactions between single electron and nuclear spins in diamond, achieving high accuracy and determining principal axes.

Contribution

The study presents a novel scheme employing quantum beat effects to accurately measure hyperfine interactions and determine principal axes in NV center systems.

Findings

Achieved hyperfine tensor component precisions below 0.5 MHz.

Demonstrated determination of hyperfine principal axes experimentally.

Method applicable to other nuclear spins interacting with NV centers.

Abstract

Precise characterization of a hyperfine interaction is a prerequisite for high fidelity manipulations of electron and nuclear spins belonging to a hybrid qubit register in diamond. Here, we demonstrate a novel scheme for determining a hyperfine interaction, using single-quantum and zero-quantum Ramsey fringes, by applying it to the system of a Nitrogen Vacancy (NV) center and a $^{13}$C nuclear spin in the 1$^{\mathrm{st}}$ shell. The zero-quantum Ramsey fringe, analogous to the quantum beat in a $\Lambda$-type level structure, particularly enhances the measurement precision for non-secular hyperfine terms. Precisions less than 0.5 MHz in the estimation of all the components in the hyperfine tensor were achieved. Furthermore, for the first time we experimentally determined the principal axes of the hyperfine interaction in the system. Beyond the 1$^{\mathrm{st}}$ shell, this method can be universally applied to other $^{13}$C nuclear spins interacting with the NV center.