Hybrid diamond quantum sensor with submicrokelvin resolution under ambient conditions
Musang Gong, Jiahe Xu, Min Yu, Liyin Zhang, Qipeng Li, Ning Wang, and Jianming Cai, Phys. Rev. Applied 21, 024053 (2024)
Nitrogen-vacancy (N-V) centers in diamond are promising quantum sensors due to their ultralong coherence time under ambient conditions and multimodal sensing capability. N-V centers are strongly coupled to magnetic fields, leading to unprecedented sensitivity in magnetic field sensing. However, the coupling strengths between N-V centers and other crucial parameters, such as temperature and pressure, are not as strong as that of the magnetic field, resulting in a relative low sensitivity. A previous study showed that the temperature sensitivity of a diamond quantum sensor could be largely improved by magnetic criticality enhancement. Here, we propose and demonstrate a hybrid quantum thermometer composed of bulk diamond with ensemble N-V centers and a gadolinium magnetic flux concentrator. In addition to the magnetic criticality enhancement of gadolinium, our scheme leverages the magnetic flux concentration and ensemble N-V centers, achieving a temperature sensitivity of about 251.5 . Near the critical point, the spin resonance to temperature reached 57.3 under an external magnetic field of 1.213 G, which is about 774 times enhanced compared with that of bare N-V centers. The submicrokelvin temperature resolution of our hybrid thermometer can be used in the calibration of a reference point of temperature, integrated marine environmental surveys, laser-frequency stabilization, aerospace high-stability temperature-control systems, and many other practical applications on a macroscopic scale.