Prospects of SPIN Gyroscopes Based on Nitrogen-Vacancy Centers in Diamond

Abstract

This project aims to develop solid-state gyroscopes based on ensembles of negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond [1], [2]. The NV center is a defect formed in diamond by one substitutional nitrogen atom and an adjacent vacancy. The NV- center features a ground state with electronic spin $\mathrm{S}=1$, which can be initialized, manipulated, and detected via convenient optical, microwave and radiofrequency transitions (Fig. 1). Nuclear spins are appealing in the context of gyroscopes because they have much smaller gyromagnetic ratios than that of the electron (by a factor of about 1000), reducing the requirements on static magnetic-field stability and homogeneity. The lifetime of nuclear spin-polarization is much longer than for electron spins. Recent work [3] has shown that it is possible to achieve high, $\sim$ 98%, polarization of $^{14}\mathrm{N}$ or $^{15}\mathrm{N}$ spins in diamond using excited-state level-anticrossing induced by hyperfine coupling of the nitrogen nucleus in the NV center with the electrons of the defect.