DC Magnetometry at the $T_2$ Limit

Abstract

Sensing static or slowly varying magnetic fields with high sensitivity and spatial resolution is critical to many applications in fundamental physics, bioimaging and materials science. Several versatile magnetometry platforms have emerged over the past decade, such as electronic spins associated with Nitrogen Vacancy (NV) centers in diamond. However, their high sensitivity to external fields also makes them poor sensors of DC fields. Indeed, the usual method of Ramsey magnetometry leaves them prone to environmental noise, limiting the allowable interrogation time to the short dephasing time T2*. Here we introduce a hybridized magnetometery platform, consisting of a sensor and ancilla, that allows sensing static magnetic fields with interrogation times up to the much longer T2 coherence time, allowing significant potential gains in field sensitivity. While more generally applicable, we demonstrate the method for an electronic NV sensor and a nuclear ancilla. It relies on frequency upconversion of transverse DC fields through the ancilla, allowing quantum lock-in detection with low-frequency noise rejection. In our experiments, we demonstrate sensitivities better than 6uT/vHz, comparable to the Ramsey method, and narrow-band signal noise filtering better than 64kHz. With technical optimization, we expect more than an one order of magnitude improvement in each of these parameters. Since our method measures transverse fields, in combination with the Ramsey detection of longitudinal fields, it ushers in a compelling technique for sensitive vector DC magnetometry at the nanoscale.