Distinguished Colloquium: Physics & Astronomy – Ronald Walsworth
About the event
The Department of Physics and Astronomy invites all to a colloquium featuring Dr. Ronald Walsworth, Department of Physics, Harvard University. Dr. Walsworth will present their talk, “Magnetic sensing using quantum defects in diamond.”
Meet for refreshments before the lecture at 3:45 p.m. – 4:10 p.m. in the foyer on floor G above the lecture hall. Please meet our guest speaker at a reception to follow, 5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. in the foyer on floor G above the lecture hall.
Abstract: Nitrogen vacancy (NV) defects in diamond provide an unparalleled combination of magnetic field sensitivity and spatial resolution in a room-temperature solid, with wide-ranging applications in both the physical and life sciences. NVs can be brought into few nanometer proximity of magnetic field sources of interest – such as single protons and electrons – while maintaining long NV spin coherence times, a large (~Bohr magneton) Zeeman shift of the NV spin states, and optical preparation and readout of the NV spin. Recent applications include mapping magnetic signatures in >4 billion-year-old meteorites and early-Earth rocks that inform theories of solar system and Earth formation, noninvasive magnetic sensing of single neuron action potentials, measuring the spin chemical potential in magnetic devices, and NMR chemical fingerprinting at the scale of a single biological cell. I will provide an overview of this technology and its diverse applications.