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arXiv · 2401.06942

Role of Oxygen in Laser Induced Contamination at Diamond-Vacuum Interfaces

Abstract

Many modern-day quantum science experiments rely on high-fidelity measurement of fluorescent signals emitted by the quantum system under study. A pernicious issue encountered when such experiments are conducted near a material interface in vacuum is "laser-induced contamination" (LIC): the gradual accretion of fluorescent contaminants on the surface where a laser is focused. Fluorescence from these contaminants can entirely drown out any signal from e.g. optically-probed color centers in the solid-state. Crucially, while LIC appears often in this context, it has not been systematically studied. In this work, we probe the onset and growth rate of LIC for a diamond nitrogen-vacancy center experiment in vacuum, and we correlate the contamination-induced fluorescence intensities to micron-scale physical build-up of contaminant on the diamond surface. Drawing upon similar phenomena previously studied in the space optics community, we use photo-catalyzed oxidation of contaminants as a mitigation strategy. We vary the residual oxygen pressure over 9 orders of magnitude and find that LIC growth is inhibited at near-atmospheric oxygen partial pressures, but the growth rate at lower oxygen pressure is non-monotonic. Finally, we discuss a model for the observed dependence of LIC growth rate on oxygen content and propose methods to extend in situ mitigation of LIC to a wider range of operating pressures.

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BibTeXRIS

Shreyas Parthasarathy, Maxime Joos, Lillian B. Hughes, Simon A. Meynell, Taylor A. Morrison, J. D. Risner-Jamtgaard, David M. Weld, Kunal Mukherjee, Ania C. Bleszynski Jayich. 2024-01-13. Role of Oxygen in Laser Induced Contamination at Diamond-Vacuum Interfaces. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevapplied.22.024067

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