Widefield microwave imaging using NV centres

The paper presents progress in developing a widefield imaging system for microwave fields based on dense ensembles of NV centres. Widefield microscopy of dc and low-frequency magnetic fields using NV centres is an already promising tool for applications ranging from biological imaging to imaging current flows in graphene. The paper expects to realise a >1mm2 field of view and sub-ms temporal resolution, exceeding the state-of-the art for widefield NV microscopy. The microscope provides 5 μm spatial resolution, given by the thickness of the near-uniaxial NV layer, and the current magnetic field sensitivity is hundreds of nT·Hz-1/2, which we expect to improve by an order of magnitude. These combined performance characteristics will provide a capability unmatched by any other microwave imaging technology. Expanding on our current focus on microwave device characterisation, microwave imaging with NV centres could also find application in medical microwave sensing and imaging, a promising new diagnostic field which is currently limited by its microwave sensor technology. Atom- or NV-based sensors would seem to be ideal candidates to augment or replace current antenna based measurements.