Quantum sensing of radio-frequency signal with NV centers in SiC.

Abstract

Silicon carbide is an emerging platform for quantum technologies that provides wafer scale and low-cost industrial fabrication. The material also hosts high-quality defects with long coherence times that can be used for quantum computation and sensing applications. Using an ensemble of nitrogen-vacancy centers and an XY8-2 correlation spectroscopy approach, we demonstrate a room-temperature quantum sensing of an artificial AC field centered at ~900 kHz with a spectral resolution of 10 kHz. Implementing the synchronized readout technique, we further extend the frequency resolution of our sensor to 0.01 kHz. These results pave the first steps for silicon carbide quantum sensors toward low-cost nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometers with a wide range of practical applications in medical, chemical, and biological analysis.