Special Seminar: Diamond quantum sensors

Color centers in diamond have emerged as a leading platform in the field of quantum sensing, broadly defined as the use of qubit systems to measure environmental parameters. In my lab, we harness the optical and spin properties of diamond color centers to image magnetic phenomena in condensed-matter and biological systems over a broad range of length scales. At the nanoscale, we build diamond magnetic microscopes to image, for example, the paramagnetic nanocrystals produced by malaria parasites. At the microscale, we embed diamond quantum sensors inside microfluidic chips to perform nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy at the scale of single cells. At the millimeter scale, we use microstructured magnetic materials to concentrate magnetic flux and improve the sensitivity of diamond magnetometers, with potential applications in medical imaging, navigation, and even dark matter detection. 

I will provide an overview and discuss some of the challenges in this field. I will also outline future directions, including designing new quantum sensing protocols, exploiting nonlinear optical processes for super-resolution imaging, and controlling the flow of spin polarization across sensor-sample interfaces.