Proposal for a room-temperature diamond maser.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 26394758.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms9251 and PMC identifier 4667537.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The application of masers is limited by its demanding working conditions (high vacuum or low temperature). A room-temperature solid-state maser is highly desirable, but the lifetimes of emitters (electron spins) in solids at room temperature are usually too short (∼ns) for population inversion. Masing from pentacene spins in p-terphenyl crystals, which have a long spin lifetime (∼0.1 ms), has been demonstrated. This maser, however, operates only in the pulsed mode. Here we propose a room-temperature maser based on nitrogen-vacancy centres in diamond, which features the longest known solid-state spin lifetime (∼5 ms) at room temperature, high optical pumping efficiency (∼10(6) s(-1)) and material stability. Our numerical simulation demonstrates that a maser with a coherence time of approximately minutes is feasible under readily accessible conditions (cavity Q-factor ∼5 × 10(4), diamond size ∼3 × 3 × 0.5 mm(3) and pump power <10 W). A room-temperature diamond maser may facilitate a broad range of microwave technologies.