Nuclear Spin Metrology with Nitrogen Vacancy Center in Diamond for Axion Dark Matter Detection

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel quantum sensing method using nitrogen vacancy centers in diamond to detect axion dark matter through nuclear spin interactions, offering sensitivity over a broad frequency range.

Contribution

It introduces a new approach leveraging nuclear spins in NV centers for axion detection, expanding the capabilities of quantum sensing in dark matter research.

Findings

Sensitive to axion masses up to 4×10^{-13} eV

Detects axion-nuclear couplings with long coherence times

Broad frequency range detection up to 100 Hz

Abstract

We present a method to directly detect the axion dark matter using nitrogen vacancy centers in diamonds. In particular, we use metrology leveraging the nuclear spin of nitrogen to detect axion-nucleus couplings. This is achieved through protocols designed for dark matter searches, which introduce a novel approach of quantum sensing techniques based on the nitrogen vacancy center. Although the coupling strength of the magnetic fields with nuclear spins is three orders of magnitude smaller than that with electron spins for conventional magnetometry, the axion interaction strength with nuclear spins is the same order of magnitude as that with electron spins. Furthermore, we can take advantage of the long coherence time by using the nuclear spins for the axion dark matter detection. We show that our method is sensitive to a broad frequency range $\lesssim 100\,\mathrm{Hz}$ corresponding to the axion mass $m_a \lesssim 4\times 10^{-13}\,\mathrm{eV}$. We present the detection limit of our method for both the axion-neutron and the axion-proton couplings and discuss its significance in comparison with other proposed ideas.