{"id":223714,"date":"2025-10-21T04:21:57","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T09:21:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/diamond-probe-measures-ultrafast-electric-fields-with-femtosecond-precision"},"modified":"2025-10-21T04:21:57","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T09:21:57","slug":"diamond-probe-measures-ultrafast-electric-fields-with-femtosecond-precision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/diamond-probe-measures-ultrafast-electric-fields-with-femtosecond-precision","title":{"rendered":"Diamond probe measures ultrafast electric fields with femtosecond precision"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/diamond-probe-measures-ultrafast-electric-fields-with-femtosecond-precision.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Researchers at University of Tsukuba have successfully measured electric fields near the surfaces of two-dimensional layered materials with femtosecond temporal and nanometer spatial resolution. They employed a diamond containing a nitrogen-vacancy center\u2014a lattice defect\u2014as a probe within an atomic force microscope, enabling atomic-scale spatial precision.<\/p>\n<p>When nitrogen is incorporated as an impurity in a <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/diamond+crystal\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">diamond crystal<\/a>, the absence of a neighboring carbon atom forms a nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center. Applying an <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/electric+field\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">electric field<\/a> to diamond containing NV centers modifies its <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/refractive+index\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">refractive index<\/a>, a phenomenon known as the electro-optic (EO) effect. Notably, this effect has not been observed in pure diamond alone.<\/p>\n<p>In previous work, the research team used a <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/femtosecond+laser\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">femtosecond laser<\/a> to detect lattice vibrations in diamond with high sensitivity by measuring the EO effect in high-purity diamond containing NV centers. These results demonstrated that diamond can act as an ultrafast EO crystal and serve as a probe\u2014termed a diamond NV probe\u2014for measuring electric fields.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers at University of Tsukuba have successfully measured electric fields near the surfaces of two-dimensional layered materials with femtosecond temporal and nanometer spatial resolution. They employed a diamond containing a nitrogen-vacancy center\u2014a lattice defect\u2014as a probe within an atomic force microscope, enabling atomic-scale spatial precision. When nitrogen is incorporated as an impurity in a diamond [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1635,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-223714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-materials","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223714\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}