Fig. 2: Optically detected NMR and spin state lifetime.
From: Optically detected nuclear magnetic resonance of coherent spins in a molecular complex
a, Schematic of the depopulation of a hyperfine level by optical pumping for spin state preparation (left). A spectral pit of 10-MHz width is prepared (right; dark blue), and resonant RF driving repopulates the level and fills the pit (light blue). b, Time evolution of the pit depth is fitted with a double-exponential decay, resulting in two spin relaxation times: T1,s(short) = 4.4 s and T1,s(long) = 122 s. c, Pointwise measurement of an ODNMR spectrum for the two ground-state transitions at 21.475 MHz (left) and 33.944 MHz (right). The spin transition has an inhomogeneous linewidth of 221(4) kHz and 88(9) kHz, respectively. d, Spin hole burning spectrum to probe a homogeneous class of spin transition. An RF π pulse is applied to burn a spin hole before the ODNMR measurement is performed. The observed hole exhibits a linewidth of 15.70(30) kHz. e, Measurement of the centre frequency (top) and the spin inhomogeneous (Inh.) linewidth (bottom) of the 21.5-MHz transition as a function of optical frequency. The dashed circles mark the spectral position of all other measurements. Each data point corresponds to a single independent measurement of the spin inhomogeneous line (n = 1 per data point), with central values and uncertainties derived from the fitting procedure. The optical inhomogeneous line is shown in orange for comparison.
