Diamond-optic enhanced photon collection efficiency for sensing with nitrogen-vacancy centers

TL;DR

This paper introduces a diamond-optic design that significantly enhances photon collection efficiency from nitrogen-vacancy centers, boosting quantum sensing sensitivity by a factor of nearly four, validated through experiments and simulations.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel diamond-optic design that increases fluorescence collection efficiency for NV centers, improving quantum sensing capabilities.

Findings

Measured fluorescence increase by a factor of 3.8

Experimental results match ray-tracing simulations

Enhanced sensitivity for magnetic, electric, pressure, temperature, and rotation measurements

Abstract

We present a design to increase the amount of collected fluorescence emitted by nitrogen-vacancy color centers in diamond used for quantum-sensing. An improvement was measured in collected fluorescence when comparing oppositely faced emitting surfaces by a factor of 3.8(1). This matches ray-tracing simulation results. This design therefore improves on the shot noise limited sensitivity in optical read-out based measurements of for instance magnetic and electric fields, pressure, temperature and rotations.