Portable Vector NV-Diamond Magnetometer for Shot-Noise-Limited, Drift-Free Operation in Unshielded Environments

Abstract

Ensemble nitrogen-vacancy (NV) diamond magnetometers combine high sensitivity with vector-field reconstruction, but practical deployment is limited by errors arising from high-frequency laser noise during short-duration operations and slow-varying gain fluctuations and offset drift during long-term operation. Here, we present an integrated digital architecture for achieving NV magnetometry stability across distinct timescales. A dynamic differential readout continuously balances fluorescence and reference channels to suppress correlated laser noise. Second-derivative Lorentzian lineshape tracking enables in-situ correction of slope variations arising from slow changes in gain and optical excitation. We further identify temperature-induced bias-magnet fluctuations as a dominant source of long-term drift and introduce a magnetic eigenvector transformation that uses the intrinsic response of NV resonances to eliminate these variations. We show, under unshielded ambient conditions, that this architecture achieves an off-resonance noise factor of 1.0 $\pm$ 0.1, matching the fundamental limit with ten-fold suppression of long-term drift, enabling stable, field-ready quantum magnetometry.