Continuous-wave room-temperature diamond maser
Continuous-wave room-temperature diamond maser
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DOI：
10.1038/nature25970
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发表时间：
2018-03-22
期刊：
影响因子：
64.8
通讯作者：
Kay, Christopher W. M.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Breeze, Jonathan D.;Salvadori, Enrico;Kay, Christopher W. M.
由于依赖低温冷冻和高真空系统，脉泽--光学激光器的微波先驱--一直被限制在相对模糊的范围内。尽管如此，由于其作为低噪声放大器和振荡器的无与伦比的性能，它已在深空通信和射电天文学中得到应用。最近演示的室温固态脉泽，利用光激发并五苯分子在对三联苯主机（1-3）的三重态内的极化电子布居铺平了道路，一类新的脉泽。然而，对三联苯具有较差的热性能和机械性能，并五苯的三重态子能级的衰减率意味着在该系统中只能观察到脉冲脉泽操作。因此，需要替代材料来实现连续发射：已经提出了含有自旋缺陷的无机材料，例如金刚石（4-6）和碳化硅（7）。本文报道了一种利用光泵金刚石中氮空位缺陷中心的连续波室温脉泽振荡器。该演示突出了室温固态脉泽在新一代微波器件中的应用潜力，这些微波器件可以在医学，安全，传感和量子技术中找到应用。
The maser-the microwave progenitor of the optical laser-has been confined to relative obscurity owing to its reliance on cryogenic refrigeration and high-vacuum systems. Despite this, it has found application in deep-space communications and radio astronomy owing to its unparalleled performance as a low-noise amplifier and oscillator. The recent demonstration of a room-temperature solid-state maser that utilizes polarized electron populations within the triplet states of photo-excited pentacene molecules in a p-terphenyl host(1-3) paves the way for a new class of maser. However,p-terphenyl has poor thermal and mechanical properties, and the decay rates of the triplet sublevel of pentacene mean that only pulsed maser operation has been observed in this system. Alternative materials are therefore required to achieve continuous emission: inorganic materials that contain spin defects, such as diamond(4-6) and silicon carbide(7), have been proposed. Here we report a continuous-wave room-temperature maser oscillator using optically pumped nitrogen-vacancy defect centres in diamond. This demonstration highlights the potential of room-temperature solid-state masers for use in a new generation of microwave devices that could find application in medicine, security, sensing and quantum technologies.