Laser spectroscopy of NV- and NV0 colour centres in synthetic diamond

In this paper, we analyse the prospects for using nitrogen-vacancy centre (NV) containing diamond as a laser gain material by measuring its key laser related parameters. Synthetic chemical vapour deposition grown diamond samples with an NV concentration of ~1 ppm have been selected because of their relatively high NV concentration and low background absorption in comparison to other samples available to us. For the samples measured, the luminescence lifetimes of the NV- and NV0 centres were measured to be 8 ± 1 ns and 20 ± 1 ns, respectively. The respective peak stimulated emission cross-sections were (3.6 ± 0.1) × 10−17 cm2 and (1.7 ± 0.1) × 10−17 cm2. These measurements were combined with absorption measurements to calculate the gain spectra for NV- and NV0 for differing inversion levels. Such calculations indicate that gains approaching those required for laser operation may be possible with one of the samples tested and for the NV- centre.

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