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Quantum microscopes based on solid-state spin quantum sensors have recently emerged as powerful tools for probing material properties and physical processes in regimes not accessible to classical sensors, especially on the nanoscale. Such microscopes have already found utility in a variety of problems, from imaging magnetism and charge transport in nanoscale devices, to mapping remanent magnetic fields from ancient rocks and biological organisms. However, applications of quantum microscopes have so far relied on sensors hosted in a rigid, three-dimensional crystal, typically diamond, which limits their ability to closely interact with the sample under study. Here we demonstrate a versatile and robust quantum microscope using quantum sensors embedded within a thin layer of a van der Waals (vdW) material, hexagonal boron nitride (hBN). To showcase the capabilities of this platform, we assemble several active vdW heterostructures, with an hBN layer acting as the quantum sensor. We demonstrate time-resolved, simultaneous temperature and magnetic imaging near the Curie temperature of a vdW ferromagnet as well as apply this unique microscope to map out charge currents and Joule heating in graphene. By enabling intimate proximity between sensor and sample, potentially down to a single atomic layer, the hBN quantum sensor represents a paradigm shift for nanoscale quantum sensing and microscopy. Moreover, given the ubiquitous use of hBN in modern materials and condensed matter physics research, we expect our technique to find rapid and broad adoption in these fields, further motivated by the prospect of performing in-situ chemical analysis and noise spectroscopy using advanced quantum sensing protocols.

Widefield quantum microscopy based on nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centres in diamond has emerged as a powerful technique for quantitative mapping of magnetic fields with a sub-micron resolution. However, the accuracy of the technique has not been characterised in detail so far. Here we show that optical aberrations in the imaging system may cause large systematic errors in the measured quantity beyond trivial blurring. We introduce a simple theoretical framework to model these effects, which extends the concept of a point spread function to the domain of spectral imaging. Using this model, the magnetic field imaging of test magnetic samples is simulated under various scenarios, and the resulting errors quantified. We then apply the model to previously published data, show that apparent magnetic anomalies can be explained by the presence of optical aberrations, and demonstrate a post-processing technique to retrieve the source quantity with improved accuracy. This work presents a guide to predict and mitigate aberration induced artefacts in quantitative NV-based widefield imaging and in spectral imaging more generally., The following article has been submitted to/accepted by AVS Quantum Science. After it is published, it will be found at https://publishing.aip.org/resources/librarians/products/journals/

Magnetic imaging with nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond, also known as quantum diamond microscopy, has emerged as a useful technique for the spatial mapping of charge currents in solid-state devices. In this work, we investigate an application to photovoltaic (PV) devices, where the currents are induced by light. We develop a widefield nitrogen-vacancy microscope that allows independent stimulus and measurement of the PV device, and test our system on a range of prototype crystalline silicon PV devices. We first demonstrate micrometer-scale vector magnetic field imaging of custom PV devices illuminated by a focused laser spot, revealing the internal current paths in both short-circuit and open-circuit conditions. We then demonstrate time-resolved imaging of photocurrents in an interdigitated back-contact solar cell, detecting current build-up and subsequent decay near the illumination point with microsecond resolution. This work presents a versatile and accessible analysis platform that may find distinct application in research on emerging PV technologies., 14 pages, 9 figures

Predicting measurement outcomes from an underlying structure often follows directly from fundamental physical principles. However, a fundamental challenge is posed when trying to solve the inverse problem of inferring the underlying source-configuration based on measurement data. A key difficulty arises from the fact that such reconstructions often involve ill-posed transformations and that they are prone to numerical artefacts. Here, we develop a numerically efficient method to tackle this inverse problem for the reconstruction of magnetisation maps from measured magnetic stray field images. Our method is based on neural networks with physically inferred loss functions to efficiently eliminate common numerical artefacts. We report on a significant improvement in reconstruction over traditional methods and we show that our approach is robust to different magnetisation directions, both in- and out-of-plane, and to variations of the magnetic field measurement axis orientation. While we showcase the performance of our method using magnetometry with Nitrogen Vacancy centre spins in diamond, our neural-network-based approach to solving inverse problems is agnostic to the measurement technique and thus is applicable beyond the specific use-case demonstrated in this work., Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures

Quantum diamond microscopy is an emerging versatile technique for studying the magnetic properties of materials. It has been applied extensively in condensed matter physics and materials science and has blossomed into a unique platform for the magnetic study of biological systems. To date, biological demonstrations of quantum diamond microscopy have been performed under ambient conditions. Here, we extend this magnetic microscopy platform to cryogenic temperatures to study magnetic anisotropy and the blocking temperature from an individual iron organelle found within the inner ear of pigeons. Our work confirms that the interface between thin histological tissue sections and diamond can be maintained under cryogenic temperatures. Our magnetic images provide evidence of magnetic anisotropy from a single iron organelle with sub-cellular resolution using this correlative optical imaging method. This approach may be extended to a broad range of systems where magnetic materials play structural and functional roles in biological systems.

The widefield diamond nitrogen-vacancy (NV) microscope is a powerful instrument for imaging magnetic fields. However, a key limitation impeding its wider adoption is its complex operation, in part due to the difficulty of precisely interfacing the sensor and sample to achieve optimum spatial resolution. Here we demonstrate a solution to this interfacing problem that is both practical and reliably minimizes NV-sample standoff. We built a compact widefield NV microscope which incorporates an integrated widefield diamond probe with full position and angular control, and developed a systematic alignment procedure based on optical interference fringes. Using this platform, we imaged an ultrathin (1 nm) magnetic film test sample, and conducted a detailed study of the spatial resolution. We reproducibly achieved an estimated NV-sample standoff (and hence spatial resolution) of at most $\sim2~\mu$m across a $\sim0.5$ mm field of view. Guided by these results, we suggest future improvements for approaching the optical diffraction limit. This work is a step towards realizing a widefield NV microscope suitable for routine high-throughput mapping of magnetic fields.

A surface plasmon polariton (SPP) mode is directly excited on a metal/air interface using an integrated mid-infrared (MIR) quantum cascade laser. We demonstrate the SPP generation and propagation via far-field and near-field MIR imaging. We also demonstrate bending and focusing of MIR surface-plasmons using a sub-wavelength metal patterning.

Conventional optical components rely on the propagation effect to control the phase and polarization of light beams. One can instead exploit abrupt phase and polarization changes associated with scattered light from optical resonators to control light propagation. In this paper, we discuss the optical responses of anisotropic plasmonic antennas and a new class of planar optical components (“metasurfaces”) based on arrays of these antennas. To demonstrate the versatility of metasurfaces, we show the design and experimental realization of a number of flat optical components: 1) metasurfaces with a constant interfacial phase gradient that deflect light into arbitrary directions; 2) metasurfaces with anisotropic optical responses that create light beams of arbitrary polarization over a wide wavelength range; 3) planar lenses and axicons that generate spherical wavefronts and nondiffracting Bessel beams, respectively; and 4) metasurfaces with spiral phase distributions that create optical vortex beams of well-defined orbital angular momentum.

We demonstrate a compact device for surface plasmon(SP)generation. A SP mode is directly excited on a metal/air interface using a dry etched facet of a mid-infrared quantum-cascade laser. We probe the SSP via mid-infrared imaging.

Scattering-type near-field optical microscopy (sNSOM) allows one to map the propagation of purely evanescent waves such as surface plasmons polaritons (SPPs). We have recently used it to image SPPs generated electrically at the surface of a mid-infrared (MIR) quantum cascade laser (QCL) including all the building blocks for an integrated active plasmonic device [1]. This talk will report on sNSOM observations on our new generation of integrated active plasmonic devices operating in the MIR, in which SPPs are launched on a metallic waveguide at distances of several hundred of micrometers from the end facet of a QCL.