Precision measurement and spectroscopy with color centers

  • Physics and Astronomy Colloquium

October 16, 2026 3:30 PM - October 16, 2026 4:30 PM
PAIS 1100

Host:
Greg Taylor
Presenter:
Dr. Victor Acosta (UNM)
Precision measurements of the optically detected spin precession of color centers in wide-bandgap semiconductors form the basis of numerous applications, ranging from imaging nanomagnetism to nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, gyroscopes, magnetometry, and searches for new spin physics. Solid-state spins offer advantages over established alkali-metal vapor sensors in that a high density of immobile spins form a tunable sensing voxel that can be tailored for a given application. I will discuss our lab’s research in using nitrogen-vacancy color centers in diamond to image magnetic phenomena in condensed-matter and biochemical systems over a broad range of length scales. Highlights include embedding diamond sensors inside microfluidic chips to perform NMR spectroscopy at the scale of single cells. I will summarize ongoing efforts to push the sensitivity frontier of these sensors towards the femtotesla level, using tricks inspired from the atomic metrology and NMR communities, with potential applications in biomedical imaging, navigation, and perhaps even dark matter detection. Finally, I will discuss new directions in optically detected NMR spectroscopy in the ultra-high-density regime. I will describe our recent demonstration of optical readout of large ensembles (~10^16) of polarized carbon-13 nuclear spins in diamond at room temperature and low magnetic fields. I will outline possible approaches to increase the number of optically detected polarized spins in color-center systems to 10^20 or (someday) even Avogadro’s number. I will touch on potential long-term applications of this research, including inertial sensing and tabletop searches for new physics.

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Precision measurement and spectroscopy with color centers
Dr. Victor Acosta (UNM)
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