Event Details

Condensed Matter webinar

Nanoscale magnetic fields contain rich information about the structure, organization and

physics of matter. At a close enough look, almost any material or device generates a magnetic stray field, even if often minute: Examples range from magnetically ordered materials, like ferromagnets and antiferromagnets, to superconducting materials, to currents flowing in conductors, to electronic and nuclear spins in molecules and biological matter. Our group is developing new experimental probes for imaging tiny magnetic fields with nanometer spatial resolution.

In this talk, I will discuss our progress with scanning diamond magnetometers in pursuit of this goal. Diamond magnetometers rely on a single spin defect in a probe tip (a nitrogen-vacancy center) and exploit concepts of quantum metrology to reach very high sensitivities. I will discuss instrumental challenges in the fabrication of diamond probes and their integration into scanning probe microscopy (SPM) systems. I will then present some illustrative examples of applications in nanoscale magnetism, including the imaging of antiferromagnetic domains and domain walls, the flow of current in graphene devices, and magnetic resonance imaging of nuclear spins with atomic spatial resolution. In a last part of the talk, I will change topic and discuss optomechanical membranes as a possible alternative approach to nanoscale field sensing.

If someone from outside of the Condensed Matter Physics group would like to join the webinar, please send a request to m.thompson@lancaster.ac.uk