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Nanoscale covariance magnetometry using two NV centers to probe spatiotemporal dynamics

MetadataDetails
Publication Date2023-03-08
AuthorsJared Rovny, Zhiyang Yuan, Mattias Fitzpatrick, Ahmed N. Abdalla, Laura Futamura
InstitutionsStanford University, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers in diamond are atom-scale defects with long spin coherence times that can be used to sense magnetic fields with high sensitivity and spatial resolution. Typically, the magnetic field projection at a single point is measured by averaging many sequential measurements with a single NV center, or the magnetic field distribution is reconstructed by taking a spatial average over an ensemble of many NV centers, discarding information. Here we propose and implement a new sensing modality, whereby two or more NV centers are measured simultaneously, and we extract temporal and spatial correlations in their signals that would otherwise be inaccessible. We analytically derive the measurable two-point correlator, and show that optimizing the readout noise is critical for measuring correlations. We experimentally demonstrate that independent control of two NV centers can be used to measure the temporal structure of correlations.