Optimizing ultrasensitive single electron magnetometer based on nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond

The measurement of the weak magnetic field in nanoscale resolution and at room temperature is always a significant topic in biological, physical, and material science. Such detection can be used to decide the characterization of the samples, such as cells, materials, and so on. Nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond has been proved to be able to detect a magnetic field with nano Tesla sensitivity and nanometer resolution at room temperature. Here we experimentally demonstrate an optimized NV center based single electron magnetometer in a commercial diamond and under a home-built optically detected magnetic resonance (ODMR) microscope. With current technology, we change the optically detected time window to get a better signal to noise ratio, and use dynamical decoupling to increase the slope of magnetic field amplitude versus fluorescence signal. By employing the 8-pulse XY-4 dynamical decoupling sequence we achieve a sensitivity of 18.9 nT/ $\sqrt {Hz} $ , which is 1.7 times better than spin echo. We also propose a NV center based scanning diamond microscope for electron and nuclear spins detection as well as nanoscale magnetic resonance imaging. If it is realized, the NV center based magnetometry will have wide application in the future.