Polarization Transfer to External Nuclear Spins Using Ensembles of Nitrogen-Vacancy Centers

Abstract

The nitrogen-vacancy (N-V) center in diamond has emerged as a candidate to noninvasively hyperpolarize nuclear spins in molecular systems to improve the sensitivity of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) experiments. Several promising proof-of-principle experiments have demonstrated small-scale polarization transfer from single N-V centers to hydrogen spins outside the diamond. However, the scaling up of these results to the use of a dense N-V ensemble, which is a necessary prerequisite for achieving realistic NMR sensitivity enhancement, has not yet been demonstrated. In this work, we present evidence for a polarizing interaction between a shallow N-V ensemble and external nuclear targets over..