PhD Project

PhD Title: Magnetic levitation of nanodiamonds containing nitrogen vacancy centres towards fundamental tests of quantum mechanics

Outline: Single negatively charged nitrogen vacancy (NV^-) centres in diamond have isolated electronic and nuclear spins that can store quantum information at room temperature for over one second. Using a magneto-gravitational trap to levitate nanodiamonds it is theoretically suggested that, once cooled, the nanodiamonds could be placed into a superposition of spatial states. The long-term goal is that this method will test the limits of macroscopicity for a spatial superposition state.

PhD Supervisor: Gavin Morley

Sponsor: Engineering and physical sciences research council (EPSRC)

Publications

1. J. E. March, B. D. Wood, C. J. Stephen, S. Mandal, A. M. Edmonds, D. J. Twitchen, M. L. Markham, O. A. Williams, and G. W. Morley, Long spin coherence and relaxation times in nanodiamonds milled from polycrystalline ¹²C diamond, arXiv:2301.10188 (2023) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2301.10188Link opens in a new window.
2. B. D. Wood, G. A. Stimpson, J. E. March, Y. N. D. Lekhai, C. J. Stephen, B. L. Green, A. C. Frangeskou, L. Ginés, S. Mandal, O. A. Williams, and G. W. Morley, Long spin coherence times of nitrogen vacancy centres in milled nanodiamonds, Phys. Rev. B 105, 205401 (2022) https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevB.105.205401Link opens in a new window.
3. B. D. Wood, S. Bose, and G. W. Morley, Spin dynamical decoupling for generating macroscopic superpositions of a free-falling nanodiamond, Phys. Rev. A 105, 012824 (2022) https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevA.105.012824Link opens in a new window.
4. B. D. Wood, and G. W. Morley, Towards a test of quantum gravity with a levitated nanodiamond containing a spin, Proc. SPIE 11881 Quantum Technology: Driving Commercialisation of an Enabling Science II (2021) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2601348Link opens in a new window.

Conferences and Seminars

Poster: "Magnetic Levitation of Microdiamonds Towards Macroscopic Superposition Generation", 73nd De Beers Diamond Conference, 10^th - 13^th July 2023

Poster:"Magnetic Levitation of Nanodiamonds for Creating Macroscopic Spatial Superpositions", UKRI Quantum Technologies for Fundamental Physics Meeting, 2^nd - 3^rd February 2023

Poster: "Magnetic Levitation of Nanodiamonds for Creating Macroscopic Spatial Superpositions", Inaugural LeviNet Conference, London, 6^th - 8^th September 2022

Presentation: "Maximising coherence times of nitrogen vacancy centres in nanodiamonds for proposed macroscopic superposition generation experiments", 72nd De Beers Diamond Conference, 4^th - 7^th July 2022

Poster: "Towards Macroscopic Spatial Superposition of Nanodiamonds", Quantum Engineering of Levitated Systems, Benasque, 24^th - 30^th April 2022

Poster: "Towards Macroscopic Spatial Superposition of Nanodiamonds", 71st De Beers Diamond Conference, 6^th - 8^th July 2021

Poster: "Towards Macroscopic Spatial Superposition of Nanodiamonds", UniKORN poster session, 16^th June 2021

Presentation: "Towards Macroscopic Spatial Superposition of Nanodiamonds", UniKORN seminar series - early career researcher talk, 17^th March 2021. Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Uv6hEnyZtA

Poster: "Towards testing mesoscopic superposition using levitated nanodiamonds", Photonics Online Meetup (POM), June 2020

Education

2019 - Present: PhD Student, University of Warwick

2014 - 2019: Master of Physics (MPhys), University of Oxford