Probing an NV Center's Nuclear Spin Environment with Coherent Population Trapping

Nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond have emerged as a versatile atom-like system, finding diverse applications in metrology and quantum information science, but interaction between the NV center’s electronic spin and its nuclear spin environment represent a major source of decoherence. We use optical techniques to monitor and control the nuclear bath surrounding an NV center. Specifically, we create an optical $\Lambda$-system using the $|\pm1\rangle$ components of the NV center’s spin-triplet ground state. When the Zeeman splitting between the two states is equal to the two-photon detuning between the lasers, population is trapped in the resulting dark state. Measuring the rate at which the NV center escapes from the dark state therefore gives information on how spin bath dynamics change the effective magnetic field experienced by the NV center. By monitoring statistics of the emitted photons, we plan to probe non-equilibrium dynamics of the bath.