Emulated nuclear spin gyroscope with 15N-V centers in diamond

Nuclear spins in solid-state platforms are promising for building rotation sensors due to their long coherence times. Among these platforms, nitrogen-vacancy (N-V) V ) centers have attracted considerable attention with ambient operating conditions. However, the current performance of N-V V gyroscopes remains limited by the degraded coherence when they are operating with large spin ensembles. Protecting the coherence of these systems requires a systematic study of the coherence-decay mechanism. Here we present the use of nitrogen-15 nuclear spins of N-V V centers in building gyroscopes and compare their performance to the better studied nitroge-14 nuclear spins: while nitrogen-15 spins benefit from their simpler energy structure and lack of a quadrupolar interaction, they suffer from other challenges in coherence protection. We systematically reveal the coherence-decay mechanism of the nuclear spin in different N-V V electronic spin manifolds and further develop a robust coherence-protection protocol based on controlling the N-V V electronic spin only, achieving a 15-fold increase in dephasing time. With the coherence protection developed, we demonstrate an emulated gyroscope by measuring a designed rotation-rate pattern, showing an order-of-magnitude sensitivity improvement.