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Diamond nanocrystals containing Nitrogen-Vacancy (NV) color centers have been used in recent years as fluorescent probes for near-field and cellular imaging. In this work we report that an infrared (IR) pulsed excitation beam can quench the photoluminescence of NV color center in a diamond nanocrystal (size < 50 nm) with an extinction ratio as high as ~90%. We attribute this effect to the heating of the nanocrystal consecutive to multi-photon absorption by the diamond matrix. This quenching is reversible: the photoluminescence intensity goes back to its original value when the IR laser beam is turned off, with a typical response time of hundred picoseconds, allowing for a fast control of NV color center photoluminescence. We used this effect to achieve sub-diffraction limited imaging of fluorescent diamond nanocrystals on a coverglass. For that, as in Ground State Depletion super-resolution technique, we combined the green excitation laser beam with the control IR depleting one after shaping its intensity profile in a doughnut form, so that the emission comes only from the sub-wavelength size central part., Comment: 5 figures, 15 pages

We introduce a point-like scanning single-photon source that operates at room temperature and offers an exceptional photostability (no blinking, no bleaching). This is obtained by grafting in a controlled way a diamond nanocrystal (size around 20 nm) with single nitrogen-vacancy color-center occupancy at the apex of an optical probe. As an application, we image metallic nanostructures in the near-field, thereby achieving a near-field scanning single-photon microscopy working at room temperature on the long term. Our work may be of importance to various emerging fields of nanoscience where an accurate positioning of a quantum emitter is required such as for example quantum plasmonics., Comment: submitted to Optics Express

We present results showing the potential of diamond nanoparticles with size less than 50 nm as photoluminescent nanoprobes for serving as stable point-like emitters attached at the tip apex of a near-field optical microscope to achieve enhanced spatial resolution., Comment: Keynote talk by F. Treussart at the 15th Int. Conf. on Luminescence and Optical Spectroscopy of Condensed Matter (ICL 08), Lyon, July 2008. Proceedings to appear in J. Luminescence