Team

Spin-mechanics with trapped diamonds

Scientific activity

Our research group is interested in the properties of defects in crystals (particularly diamond) and their use in experiments involving the coupling of their spins with mechanical modes of levitating objects.

The defects we use have the electronic levels in the bandgap of semiconductor crystals, giving them very high stability, especially when emitting light.

What’s more, some defects, such as the negatively charged NV (Nitrogen-Vacancy center) state in diamond, or the boron gap in boron nitride, have spin triplets in the ground state that can be polarized and optically read at room temperature.

This property has recently enabled us to optically control “diamond magnetism” and, for example, exert conservative or viscous forces on levitating particles.

© Gabriel Hétet, 2021.

Figure: Optical table with mirrors/periscope/AOM and vacuum chamber
in which the experiment on manipulating the spins of levitating diamonds takes place.