AWGs for Quantum Sensors

Quantum sensors allow us to understand the world  around us at an unprecedented level of detail: their advanced sensor technology vastly improves the accuracy of how we measure, navigate, study, explore, see, and interact with the world around us by sensing changes in motion, and electric and magnetic fields.

The analyzed data is collected at the atomic level and collecting these “delicate” data at the atomic level often means extracting information from individual atoms instead of from the huge collections of atoms, as happens in classical physics.

This allows quantum sensors to make our technological devices exponentially more accurate, more thorough, more efficient, and more productive. Devices that use quantum sensing are also not subject to the same physical constraints as conventional sensors, allowing for exceptional reliability with less vulnerability to the signal jamming and other electromagnetic interference that is increasingly common with today’s light- and sound-based data sensors.

Because quantum sensing measures activity in the physical world using atomic properties, they can help in everyday’s life for:

• faster, more accurate, more reliable geolocation than is possible with today’s satellite-dependent global positioning system (GPS) devices, with far fewer limitations.
• Providing doctors with more detailed and accurate medical diagnostic images at lower cost and with fewer potential side effects for patients.
• Better, safer autonomous navigation of vehicles on the ground, in the air, and at sea – even in  high traffic areas and around unexpected obstacles.
• More accurate and less vulnerable guidance systems in space, under water, and in the increasing number of zones overwhelmed by radio-frequency (RF) signals
• Reliable detection, imaging, and mapping of underground environments from transit tunnels, sewers, and water pipes to ancient ruins, mines, and subterranean habitats.
• Deeper, more active sensing of gravitational changes and tectonic shifts that can forewarn or trigger avalanches, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, or climate change activities.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging

MRI quantum sensors have been around for decades. For example, MRI machines use quantum sensors and have  been around since the 1970s. Inside one of these machines the very atoms in your body are turned  into individual quantum sensors. 

MRIs use magnetic fields to manipulate a quantum property called spin within your body’s atoms, and the response of those spins to the magnetic fields can be  measured and transformed into an image.

Nitrogen Vacancy Centers (NV) Magnetometer

Atomic clocks are another kind of quantum sensor and have been around since the 1950s. They keep time in GPS satellites and even define the official SI  Atomic Clockunit of a second, but things have changed since then.
Modern innovations are making new quantum sensors and applications possible: one of these newer technologies makes use of nitrogen vacancy  centers, or NV centers, which can be found or  fabricated within diamonds. 

Pure diamond consists  of a perfect lattice of carbon atoms. If two of those adjacent carbons are removed and one is  replaced with a nitrogen atom, then the nitrogen  together with the hole or vacant spot function  as an incredibly sensitive magnetometer.

One particularly interesting defect occurs when a carbon in the crystal is replaced by a nitrogen atom, and the adjacent carbon is missing. This defect is known as a nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centre and has its own quantum spin, which can be thought of as a rotating magnet. Diamonds are mostly made of spin-neutral carbon-12 atoms, so the NV centre’s spin is unaffected by that of its immediate neighbours. And because the diamond matrix is so stiff, the atoms don’t jostle enough at room temperature to nudge the spin into a different state.

The spin can be altered, however, by electromagnetic radiation or a magnetic field — a property that enables diamonds with NV centres to be used as sensors. The NV centre is also photoluminescent: when lit with green light it will emit a red glow. Because the spin state of the NV centre determines how strongly the diamond fluoresces, scientists can use changes in brightness to monitor changes in the centre’s spin state due to microwaves or a magnetic field. By examining which frequencies cause changes in the light, researchers can even use the diamond to measure the strength of a magnetic field. This technique is called optically detected magnetic resonance.

The Arb-Rider AWG-7000 Series has been used to control the experimental pulses’ sequences used to manipulate single tin vacancy centers in diamond.

 The AWG-7000 allows generating narrow electrical square pulses with high amplitude up to 5Vpp  to control an electro-optical amplitude modulator in order to generate short laser pulses.
Using this mechanism, it is possible to generate optical pulses with a close to Gaussian shape exhibiting a full-width-half-maximum as narrow as 130ps.

Furthermore, the AWG-7000 can be used to drive an electro-optical phase modulator for generation of frequency sidebands up to about 7GHz, enabling driving of two optical transitions with phase-stable laser fields.