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Continuous-wave room-temperature diamond maser

Breeze, J; Salvadori, E; Sathian, J; Alford, N; Kay, CWM; (2018) Continuous-wave room-temperature diamond maser. Nature , 555 (7697) pp. 493-496. 10.1038/nature25970. Green open access

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Abstract

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 host1,2,3 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 diamond4,5,6 and silicon carbide7, 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.

Type: Article
Title: Continuous-wave room-temperature diamond maser
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1038/nature25970
Publisher version: http://doi.org/10.1038/nature25970
Language: English
Additional information: © 2018 Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature. All rights reserved. This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Physics and Astronomy
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > London Centre for Nanotechnology
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10045767
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