Quantum Diamond Radio Frequency Signal Analyser based on Nitrogen-Vacancy centers

Abstract

The fast development of radio-frequency (RF) technologies increases the need for compact, low consumption and broadband real-time RF spectral analyser. To overcome the electronic bottleneck encountered by electronic solutions, which limits the real time bandwidth to hundreds of MHz, we propose a new approach exploiting the quantum properties of the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond. Here we describe a Quantum Diamond Signal Analyser (Q-DiSA) platform and characterize its performances. We successfully detect RF signals over a large tunable frequency range (25 GHz), a wide instantaneous bandwidth (up to 4 GHz), a MHz frequency resolution (down to 1 MHz), a ms temporal resolution and a large dynamic range (40 dB).