Masers, the microwave analog of lasers, are an important class of devices that can be used to generate highly coherent and stable microwave signals as well as quantum-limited amplification of microwave photons. Recently, the interest in such devices has increased, probably owing to experiments demonstrating the successful operation at room temperature of solid-state maser employing defects in diamond. These defects, called nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers, are comprised of a negatively charged substitutional nitrogen that replaces one of the diamond crystal lattice’s carbons and a vacancy adjacent to the excluded carbon atom. The performance of diamond-based masers, in terms of gain, noise, bandwidth, frequency of operation, and saturation, greatly depends upon the specific diamond crystal composition and its geometry in the respective microwave device. The currently available data on these issues are scarce and sometimes conflicting. It is, therefore, important to provide additional experimental data, complemented by theoretical analysis, to further optimize the required diamond material and thus enhance the capabilities of diamond-based maser technology. The latter is currently limited to operate only as an oscillator at very small bandwidths, with low saturation power. Here, we provide experimental results on a set of important parameters affecting diamond maser operation, such as the population and linewidth of the electron spin energy levels of the NVs under light illumination, as well as their relaxation times for several different diamond material compositions. These results are then used to point out which diamond material compositions and crystal geometry may be best suitable for maser-type applications.
Skip Nav Destination
Performance analysis of diamond-based masers
,
,
,
Article navigation
14 April 2021
Research Article|
April 14 2021
Performance analysis of diamond-based masers
Alexander Sherman
;
Alexander Sherman
1
Schulich Faculty of Chemistry, Technion—Israel Institute of Technology
, Haifa 3200003, Israel
Search for other works by this author on:
Lotem Buchbinder;
Lotem Buchbinder
1
Schulich Faculty of Chemistry, Technion—Israel Institute of Technology
, Haifa 3200003, Israel
Search for other works by this author on:
Siyuan Ding
;
Siyuan Ding
2
Department of Physics, Boston College
, 140 Commonwealth Ave., Chestnut Hill, Boston, Massachusetts 02467, USA
Search for other works by this author on:
Aharon Blank
Aharon Blank
a)
1
Schulich Faculty of Chemistry, Technion—Israel Institute of Technology
, Haifa 3200003, Israel
a)Author to whom correspondence should be addressed: [email protected]
Search for other works by this author on:
Alexander Sherman
1
Lotem Buchbinder
1
Siyuan Ding
2
Aharon Blank
1,a)
1
Schulich Faculty of Chemistry, Technion—Israel Institute of Technology
, Haifa 3200003, Israel
2
Department of Physics, Boston College
, 140 Commonwealth Ave., Chestnut Hill, Boston, Massachusetts 02467, USA
a)Author to whom correspondence should be addressed: [email protected]
J. Appl. Phys. 129, 144503 (2021)
Article history
Received:
January 29 2021
Accepted:
March 26 2021
Citation
Alexander Sherman, Lotem Buchbinder, Siyuan Ding, Aharon Blank; Performance analysis of diamond-based masers. J. Appl. Phys. 14 April 2021; 129 (14): 144503. https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0045802
Download citation file:
Pay-Per-View Access
$40.00
Sign In
You could not be signed in. Please check your credentials and make sure you have an active account and try again.
Citing articles via
A step-by-step guide to perform x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy
Grzegorz Greczynski, Lars Hultman
Piezoelectric thin films and their applications in MEMS: A review
Jinpeng Liu, Hua Tan, et al.
Decoding diffraction and spectroscopy data with machine learning: A tutorial
D. Vizoso, R. Dingreville