Electrical readout microwave-free sensing with diamond

Understand

While nitrogen-vacancy (NV-) centers have been extensively investigated in the context of spin-based quantum technologies, the spin-state readout is conventionally performed optically, which may limit miniaturization and scalability.

• Here, we report photoelectric readout of ground-state cross-relaxation features, which serves as a method for measuring electron spin resonance spectra of nanoscale electronic environments and also for microwave-free sensing.
• As a proof of concept, by systematically tuning NV centers into resonance with the target electronic system, we extracted the spectra for the P1 electronic spin bath in diamond.
• Such detection may enable probing optically inactive defects and the dynamics of local spin environment.