Temperature sensing with RF-dressed states of nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond

Using the electronic spin of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond is a promising approach to realizing high-precision temperature sensors; furthermore, pulsed optically detected magnetic resonance (pulsed-ODMR) is one way to measure the temperature using these NV centers. However, pulsed-ODMR techniques such as D-Ramsey, thermal echo, or thermal Carr–Purcell–Meiboom–Gill sequences require careful calibration and strict time synchronization to control the microwave (MW) pulses, which complicates their applicability. Continuous-wave ODMR (CW-ODMR) is a more advantageous way to measure temperature with NV centers because it can be implemented simply by continuous application of a green laser and MW radiation. However, CW-ODMR has lower sensitivity than pulsed-ODMR. Therefore, it is important to improve the temperature sensitivity of CW-ODMR techniques. Herein, we thus propose and demonstrate a method for measuring temperature using CW-ODMR with a quantum spin state dressed by a radio-frequency (RF) field under a transverse magnetic field. The use of an RF field is expected to suppress the inhomogeneous broadening resulting from strain and/or electric-field variations. The experimental results confirm that the linewidth is decreased in the proposed scheme when compared to the conventional scheme. In addition, we measured the temperature sensitivity to be about 50.4 ± 3.5 mK / Hz, and this is approximately eight times better than that of the conventional scheme.