Diamond clock combines two signals to cut temperature-driven drift
Despite all the advertisements for engagement rings and necklace gifts, natural diamonds are imperfect. Their carbon atoms are arranged in a cubic lattice, but they nonetheless contain several types of crystallographic defects due to impurities that occasionally replace a carbon atom. The most common types of impurities are nitrogen and boron; "Type I" diamonds contain nitrogen impurities, which…
Natural diamonds, despite their beauty in jewelry, are not perfect. Impurities such as nitrogen and boron often replace carbon atoms in their cubic lattice structure. Among these, nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers, where a nitrogen atom takes the place of a carbon atom with an adjacent empty lattice spot, are particularly noteworthy.
Scientists at U.S. and German institutions have developed a method to harness the unique properties of NV centers to create a more stable diamond clock. This clock relies on the temperature-insensitive nuclear quadrupole splitting (Q) of the 14N nucleus within the NV centers, combined with the electronic splitting (D) caused by electron spin interactions.
By measuring both the D and Q effects in an ensemble of NV centers, the researchers were able to compensate for temperature-driven drift, reducing the clock's temperature sensitivity by about 10 times at one-second intervals at room temperature. Over a 10-day period, the diamond clock demonstrated a fractional instability below 5 × 10−9 at 200 seconds and 1 × 10−8 at 200,000 seconds, outperforming a rubidium-based clock by a significant margin.
This groundbreaking development could pave the way for compact, multifunctional solid-state clocks and quantum sensors, providing a new level of precision and stability in timekeeping technology.
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