Skip to content
Preprint

Direct Observation of Dipolar-Driven Anisotropic Quantum Projection Noise in a Solid-State Spin Ensemble

Sep 2026 · 0 citations · 6 references
Physics

Abstract

The nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond is a prominent quantum-sensing platform. Combining readout at the quantum projection noise limit with strong dipolar interactions promises substantial gains in sensitivity. However, experimentally accessing this regime has remained a longstanding challenge. In this work, we demonstrate quantum-projection-noise-resolved readout of a strongly-interacting, two-dimensional ensemble of NV centers. Our approach leverages repetitive readout via the NV's intrinsic $^{15}$N nuclear memory at a moderate magnetic field ($\sim 0.3$ T), improving the readout fidelities by nearly an order of magnitude. This enables us to directly resolve the quantum projection noise of a coherent spin state and to watch the ensemble's intrinsic dipolar interactions shear this noise into an anisotropic profile. Our results open the door to direct measurements of spin squeezing and entanglement-enhanced sensing in the solid state.

View source

Similar papers

Preprint Sep 2026

Engineering and Probing a One-Dimensional Dipolar Spin Ensemble in Diamond

Dimensionality plays a central role in determining the collective behavior of interacting quantum systems. Engineering strongly interacting ensembles of solid-state spin defects in reduced dimensions remains a significant challenge at the interface between the applied and fundamental sciences. Here, we create and chara...

Ling-Hsiang Chen, Shreyas Parthasarathy, S. Meynell et al. · 0 citations
Preprint Sep 2026

Nanoscale magnetometry via collective many-body dynamics in diamond

Many-body dynamics constitutes a promising approach for creating correlations between quantum particles which can be used for applications in sensing and metrology. However, utilizing this potential for substantial gains in practical settings is a challenging task with only a very few applications realized to date. Her...

Hao-Yang Gao, Piotr Put, Nathaniel T. Leitao et al. · 2 citations
Preprint Oct 2026

Energy-filtered readout preserves gap-enhanced sensing in interacting quantum dots

A small excitation gap makes a quantum dot a sensitive probe of a weak electric field, but the charge detector that reads the probe can also excite it. We ask how much of this gap enhancement survives continuous readout, for two interacting electrons tuned through a confinement-driven crossover in a gate-defined quantu...

Shirwan Abdullah · 0 citations
Preprint Oct 2026

Extracting the anyon charge from shot noise in complex fractional quantum Hall edges

Shot-noise measurements with a quantum point contact provide a direct probe of the quasiparticle charge in Laughlin fractional quantum Hall (FQH) states. However, the interpretation of such measurements becomes more subtle for multichannel edges, where the point-contact tunneling noise coexists with noise generated by...

Jinhong Park, C. Spånslätt · 0 citations
Preprint Sep 2026

Spin-to-polarization mapping with a coherent quantum dot-cavity receiver

Coherent light-matter interfaces controllably modifying the state of a photon upon interaction with a stationary qubit are a key resource for implementing deterministic entangling gates for optical quantum technologies. This requires a one-to-one mapping between the state of the scattered photon and that of the embedde...

Adrià Medeiros, V. Vinel, Eliott Rambeau et al. · 0 citations
Preprint Sep 2026

Observing and evading quantum back-action on a kilogram-scale oscillator

Continuous quantum displacement measurements are fundamentally limited by a trade-off between readout imprecision and measurement back-action, constrained by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. In the Laser Interferometric Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), these two quantum noise components dominate much of the...

Begüm Kabagöz, E. Oelker, Dhruva Ganapathy et al. · 0 citations

We use cookies to run the site and, with your consent, for analytics and to show ads. See our Cookie Policy.