Landau Zener Interaction Enhanced Quantum Sensing in Spin Defects of Hexagonal Boron Nitride

TL;DR

This paper introduces a Landau-Zener interaction method using frequency modulation to significantly improve quantum sensing with spin defects in hexagonal boron nitride, enabling faster and more robust measurements.

Contribution

It demonstrates a novel frequency-ramped microwave pulse technique that enhances spin-state transfer and contrast in hBN quantum sensors, supported by quantum dynamics simulations.

Findings

4-fold increase in spin-state transfer efficiency

16-fold reduction in measurement time

Robustness in noisy environments

Abstract

Negatively charged boron vacancies (V$_{\text{B}}^{-}$) in hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) comprise a promising quantum sensing platform, optically addressable at room temperature and transferrable onto samples. However, broad hyperfine-split spin transitions of the ensemble pose challenges for quantum sensing with conventional resonant excitation due to limited spectral coverage. While isotopically enriched hBN using $^{10}$B and $^{15}$N isotopes (h$^{10}$B$^{15}$N) exhibits sharper spectral features, significant inhomogeneous broadening persists. We demonstrate that, implemented via frequency modulation on an FPGA, a frequency-ramped microwave pulse achieves around 4-fold greater $|0\rangle\rightarrow|-1\rangle$ spin-state population transfer and thus contrast than resonant microwave excitation and thus 16-fold shorter measurement time for spin relaxation based quantum sensing. Quantum dynamics simulations reveal that an effective two-state Landau-Zener model captures the complex relationship between population inversion and pulse length with relaxations incorporated. Our approach is robust and valuable for quantum relaxometry with spin defects in hBN in noisy environments.