Tue March 11, 2025 4:00 pm
CUA Seminar: Christian Degen – Exploring condensed matter physics with diamond quantum sensors
Location:Harvard Ory Forum (301 A/B) in the Goel Building (60 Oxford)
Diamond has emerged as a unique material for a variety of applications, both because it is very robust and because it has defects with interesting properties. One of these defects, the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center, shows quantum behavior up to above room temperature. Our group is exploring diamond as a platform for realizing quantum sensors with exquisite sensitivities and new capabilities.
In this talk, I will discuss efforts towards using single NV centers for probing mesoscopic phenomena in condensed-matter systems. I will first introduce the technology and basic concepts we developed in pursuit of this goal, especially the engineering of nanophotonic probes for scanning probe imaging. I will then present a few examples showcasing the wide variety of experiments enabled by these probes, such as the imaging of magnetically and electrically ordered materials, the imaging of electronic transport in graphene, or the imaging of superconductivity.