Nitrogen Vacancy Centers as Quantum Sensors

There has been a growing interest in nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers as high precision sensors in biology, chemistry, and physics. NV centers are naturally occurring defects in diamonds. They can detect nanoscale perturbations in local temperature, pressure, magnetic and electric fields. These quantum sensors perform optimally in ambient conditions, and their biocompatibility permits their use in vivo. The electronic states of the NV center can be controlled by optical pumping and measured by optical readout. The aforementioned properties alongside the ability to initialize spin eigenstates, with coherence times approaching one second, is the reason that NV sensing is increasingly popular qua quantum sensor. An overview of the NV center’s electronic structure, synthesis, instrumentation, application, and future is presented.