Robust Magnetometry with Single NV Centers via Two-step Optimization

Understand

Shallow Nitrogen-Vacancy (NV) centers are promising candidates for high-precision sensing applications; these defects, when positioned a few nanometers below the surface, provide an atomic-scale resolution along with substantial sensitivity.

• However, the dangling bonds and impurities on the diamond surface result in a complex environment which reduces the sensitivity and is unique to each shallow NV center.
• To avoid the environment's detrimental effect, we apply feedback-based quantum optimal control.
• We first show how a direct search can improve the initialization/readout process.