Searching for an exotic spin-dependent interaction with a single electron-spin quantum sensor

Abstract

Searching for new particles beyond the standard model is crucial for understanding several fundamental conundrums in physics and astrophysics. Several hypothetical particles can mediate exotic spin-dependent interactions between ordinary fermions, which enable laboratory searches via the detection of the interactions. Most laboratory searches utilize a macroscopic source and detector, thus allowing the detection of interactions with submillimeter force range and above. It remains a challenge to detect the interactions at shorter force ranges. Here we propose and demonstrate that a near-surface nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond can be utilized as a quantum sensor to detect the monopole–dipole interaction between an electron spin and nucleons. Our result sets a constraint for the electron–nucleon coupling, , with the force range 0.1–23 μm. The obtained upper bound of the coupling at 20 μm is < 6.24 × 10−15.

Constraints on a Spin-Dependent Exotic Interaction between Electrons with Single Electron Spin Quantum Sensors

“…The obtained upper bound of the interaction at 500 µm is |g e A g e A /4π c| ≤ 1.8 × 10 −19 , which is one order of magnitude more stringent than a previous experiment. quantum sensor to detect the monopole-dipole interaction between an electron spin and nucleons at micrometer scale [28]. In the present study, a new constraint on an axial-vector mediated interaction between electrons for the force range 10-900 µm has been established.…”

“…Furthermore, the magnetic noise can be isolated well by dynamical decoupling technology [26,27]. Recently, this type of quantum sensor has been proposed and utilized to explore electron-nucleon monopole-dipole interaction [28].Herein, we focus on searching for exotic dipole-dipole interaction mediated by axial-vector fields between electrons. Figure 1(a) shows the schematic of the setup.…”

“…The |m S = +1 state remains idle due to the large detuning. Laser pulses with wavelengths of 532 nm are applied to initialize and readout the state of S [28]. There are two layers, a 150-nm-silver layer and a 100-nm-PMMA layer, between the single crystal and diamond to isolate the two laser beams as well as fluorescence from S and the single crystal.…”

Constraining Exotic Interactions

“…In two recently published articles, Xing Rong and his collaborators described how they used a single NV center as a quantum sensor to constrain axion‐mediated monopole–dipole interactions between electron and nucleon and vector‐mediated dipole–dipole interactions between electrons . Results obtained for the latter interaction allowed to obtain a limit for a dimensionless coupling constant at the scale of 500 μm (2.5 meV).…”

New constraints on axion-mediated P , T -violating interaction from electric dipole moments of diamagnetic atoms

“…The constraints derived in Ref. [13] gave a significant improvement over previous laboratory limits on these interaction constants for certain axion masses [14][15][16][17][18][19][20].…”