Selective Temperature Sensing in Nanodiamonds Using Dressed States

Temperature sensing at the nanoscale is a significant experimental challenge. Here, an approach using dressed states is reported to make a leading quantum sensor – the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond – selectively sensitive to temperature, even in the presence of normally confounding magnetic fields. Using an experimentally straightforward approach, the magnetic sensitivity of the NV center is suppressed by a factor of seven, while retaining full temperature sensitivity and narrowing the NV center linewidth. These results demonstrate the power of engineering the sensor Hamiltonian using external control fields to enable sensing with improved specificity to target signals.