2017/06/30 by Jochen Scheuer, Ilai Schwartz, S Müller +6 · 47 citations
Chemistry · Earth and Planetary Sciences · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #Atomic physics #Chemistry #Condensed matter physics #Diamond and Carbon-based Materials Research #Electron #High-pressure geophysics and materials #Hyperpolarization (physics) #Magnetic resonance imaging #Magnetization transfer #Nuclear magnetic resonance #Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy #Physics #Polarization (electrochemistry) #Quantum mechanics #Spin polarization #Spins #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.96.174436
published in Physical review. B./Physical review. B 96(17) (American Physical Society) · The text and figures have been improved
openalex publication_date 2017/11/27 · arxiv created 2017/11/30 · arxiv updated 2017/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Highly sensitive nuclear spin detection is crucial in many scientific areas including nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and quantum computing. The tiny thermal nuclear spin polarization represents a major obstacle towards this goal which may be overcome by dynamic nuclear spin polarization (DNP) methods. The latter often rely on the transfer of the thermally polarized electron spins to nearby nuclear spins, which is limited by the Boltzmann distribution of the former. Here we utilize microwave dressed states to transfer the high (>92%) nonequilibrium electron spin polarization of a single nitrogen-vacancy center (NV) induced by short laser pulses to the surrounding 13C carbon nuclear spins. The NV is repeatedly repolarized optically, thus providing an effectively infinite polarization reservoir. A saturation of the polarization of the nearby nuclear spins is achieved, which is confirmed by the decay of the polarization transfer signal and shows an excellent agreement with theoretical simulations. Hereby we introduce the polarization readout by polarization inversion method as a quantitative magnetization measure of the nuclear spin bath, which allows us to observe by ensemble averaging macroscopically hidden polarization dynamics like Landau-Zener-St"uckelberg oscillations. Moreover, we show that using the integrated solid effect both for single- and double-quantum transitions nuclear spin polarization can be achieved even when the static magnetic field is not aligned along the NV's crystal axis. This opens a path for the application of our DNP technique to spins in and outside of nanodiamonds, enabling their application as MRI tracers. Furthermore, the methods reported here can be applied to other solid state systems where a central electron spin is coupled to a nuclear spin bath, e.g., phosphor donors in silicon and color centers in silicon carbide.