Imaging stress and magnetism at high pressures using a nanoscale quantum sensor

Pressure alters the physical, chemical, and electronic properties of matter. The diamond anvil cell enables tabletop experiments to investigate a diverse landscape of high-pressure phenomena. Here, we introduce and use a nanoscale sensing platform that integrates nitrogen-vacancy (NV) color centers directly into the culet of diamond anvils. We demonstrate the versatility of this platform by performing diffraction-limited imaging of both stress fields and magnetism as a function of pressure and temperature. We quantify all normal and shear stress components and demonstrate vector magnetic field imaging, enabling measurement of the pressure-driven phase transition in iron and the complex pressure-temperature phase diagram of gadolinium. A complementary NV-sensing modality using noise spectroscopy enables the characterization of phase transitions even in the absence of static magnetic signatures.

Source: ScienceNOW - December 11, 2019 Category: Science Authors: Hsieh, S., Bhattacharyya, P., Zu, C., Mittiga, T., Smart, T. J., Machado, F., Kobrin, B., Höhn, T. O., Rui, N. Z., Kamrani, M., Chatterjee, S., Choi, S., Zaletel, M., Struzhkin, V. V., Moore, J. E., Levitas, V. I., Jeanloz, R., Yao, N. Y. Tags: Geochemistry, Geophysics, Physics reports Source Type: news