We report on pulsed-laser-induced generation of nitrogenvacancy (NV) centers in diamond facilitated by a solid-immersion lens (SIL). The SIL enables laser writing at energies as low as 5.8 nJ per pulse and allows vacancies to be formed close to a diamond surface without inducing surface graphitization. We operate in the previously unexplored regime, where lattice vacancies are created following tunneling breakdown rather than multiphoton ionization. We present three samples in which NV center arrays were laserwritten at distances between ∼1 and 40 μm from a diamond surface, all presenting narrow distributions of optical linewidths with means between 62.1 and 74.5 MHz. The linewidths include the effect of long-term spectral diffusion induced by a 532 nm repump laser for charge-state stabilization, thereby emphasizing the particularly low-charge-noise environment of the created color centers. Such high-quality NV centers are excellent candidates for practical applications employing two-photon quantum interference with separate NV centers. Finally, we propose a model for disentangling power broadening from inhomogeneous broadening in the NV center optical linewidth.
The transmission X-ray microscope (TXM) on the Anatomix beamline welcomed its first nano-tomography users in 2019. The instrument is based on diffractive optics and works in the range of energies from 7 keV to 21 keV. A spatial resolution in 3D volumes of better than 100 nm can be achieved. The design allows imaging samples in air, and local tomography as well as off-axis tomography scans are possible. Scans below and above K-edges can be made to access elemental distribution. The TXM serves materials science and the bio-medical field.
Among the techniques that are being implemented on the imaging beamline ANATOMIX at Synchrotron SOLEIL [1,2], hard X-ray full-field microscopy is of paramount importance. The transmission X-ray microscope (TXM) on ANATOMIX, based on diffractive optics, is designed for photon energies around three working values of 6.6, 10 and 18 keV. It aims at a spatial resolution down to 100 nm or less, corresponding to pixel sizes down to 30 nm.The diffractive optics for the TXM-beam shapers (condensers), objective zone plates and phase masks for Zernike phase contrast-are manufactured at the Laboratory for Micro-and Nanotechnology of the Paul Scherrer Institut in Villigen, Switzerland. A first set of beam shapers and objectives has been produced, and tests in absorption contrast were recently conducted, using a temporary mechanical setup.These test measurements were carried out with a set of optics designed for 10 keV: a beam shaper [3] illuminating a field of view of 40 × 40 µm², with a physical aperture of 2.5 mm diameter and smallest zones of 50 nm width, and objective zone plates of the same outermost zone width and a diameter of 100 µm, resulting in a focal length of 40 mm at 10 keV. The diffractive X-ray optics were made of iridium using the frequency-doubling method [4], with structure heights of about 1 µm for the beam shaper and 1.6 µm for the objective zone plates, which were patterned on both sides of the membrane [5]. Other elements included a central stop placed a few cm upstream of the beam shaper, an orderselecting aperture (OSA, pinhole with 0.3 mm diameter) 70 mm from the sample and a diffuser (sheets of paper) placed upstream of the OSA. Two indirect, lens-coupled detectors were used: one for alignment, placed just downstream of the objective zone plate and consisting of a 22-µm-thick lutetium aluminum garnet (LuAG) scintillator, a 10× magnifying microscope optics and a CMOS-based digital camera with 6.5-µm pixels (Hamamatsu Orca Flash 4 V2), resulting in an effective pixel size of 0.65 µm. The other detector, used to record the actual TXM micrographs, was placed 4.5 m downstream of the objective zone plate and composed of a 100-µm-thick scintillator, photo-camera optics with an overall magnification of 3.4 and a CCD camera (PCO 4000, 9-µm pixels) using 2×2 pixel binning, resulting in an effective detector pixel size of 5.3 µm. Including the X-ray magnification factor of 110, this resulted in a pixel size of 49 nm at sample level. The alignment detector and sample stage were mounted on standard translation stages (Huber Diffraktionstechnik, Rimsting, Germany), the TXM optics on piezo-based translation stages (SmarAct, Oldenburg, Germany). Figure 1 shows a TXM micrograph obtained with this setup on a resolution test chart (model XRESO-50, NTT-AT, Japan; tantalum structures of 500 nm height). The smallest structures in the center of this reference sample of "Siemens-star" type, resolved in the image (see inset of Figure 1), have a period of 100 nm and are thus just at the Nyquist limit of resolution for the p...
The nitrogen-vacancy center (NV) in diamond, with its exceptional spin coherence and convenience in optical spin initialization and readout, is increasingly used both as a quantum sensor and as a building block for quantum networks. Employing photonic structures for maximizing the photon collection efficiency in these applications typically leads to broadened optical linewidths for the emitters, which are commonly created via nitrogen ion implantation. With studies showing that only native nitrogen atoms contribute to optically coherent NVs, a natural conclusion is to either avoid implantation completely or substitute nitrogen implantation by an alternative approach to vacancy creation. Here, we demonstrate that implantation of carbon ions yields a comparable density of NVs as implantation of nitrogen ions and that it results in NV populations with narrow optical linewidths and low charge-noise levels even in thin diamond microstructures. We measure a median NV linewidth of 150 MHz for structures thinner than 5 μm, with no trend of increasing linewidths down to the thinnest measured structure of 1.9 μm. We propose a modified NV creation procedure in which the implantation is carried out after instead of before the diamond fabrication processes and confirm our results in multiple samples implanted with different ion energies and fluences.
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