Towards a temperature-insensitive composite diamond clock
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Quantum Physics arXiv:2601.00157 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 1 Jan 2026] Title:Towards a temperature-insensitive composite diamond clock Authors:Sean Lourette, Andrey Jarmola, Jabir Chathanathil, Victor M. Acosta, A. Glen Birdwell, Peter Blümler, Dmitry Budker, Sebastián C. Carrasco, Tony G. Ivanov, Shimon Kolkowitz, Vladimir S. Malinovsky View a PDF of the paper titled Towards a temperature-insensitive composite diamond clock, by Sean Lourette and 10 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Frequency references based on solid state spins promise simplicity, compactness, robustness, multifunctionality, ease of integration, and high densities of emitters. Nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond are a natural candidate, but the electronic zero-field splitting exhibits a large fractional temperature dependence, which has precluded its use as a stable clock transition. Here we show that this limitation can be overcome by forming a composite frequency reference that combines measurements of the electronic splitting D with the nuclear quadrupole splitting of the $^{14}$N nuclear spin intrinsic to the NV center. We further benchmark this composite approach against alternative strategies for mitigating temperature sensitivity. By implementing a specially designed pulse sequence with an eight-phase control scheme that suppresses pulse imperfections, we interleave measurements of D and Q in a high-density NV ensemble and demonstrate a temperature-compensated composite frequency reference. The stability of this composite diamond clock is characterized over a 10-day period at room temperature through a comparison to a Rb vapor-cell clock, yielding a fractional instability below $5 \times 10^{-9}$ for an averaging time of $\tau = 200$ s and below $1 \times 10^{-8}$ at $\tau = 2 \times 10^5$ s, corresponding to measured improvements by a factor of 4 and 200, respectively, over a clock based purely on the single frequency D for the same periods. By characterizing the residual sensitivity to magnetic fields, optical power, and radio-frequency drive amplitudes, we find that temperature is no longer the dominant source of instability. These results establish complementary electron- and nuclear-spin transitions in diamond as a viable route to thermally robust frequency metrology, providing a pathway toward compact, multifunctional solid-state clocks and quantum sensors. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Applied Physics (physics.app-ph); Atomic Physics (physics.atom-ph); Instrumentation and Detectors (physics.ins-det) Cite as: arXiv:2601.00157 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2601.00157v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2601.00157 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Sean Lourette [view email] [v1] Thu, 1 Jan 2026 01:17:43 UTC (2,525 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Towards a temperature-insensitive composite diamond clock, by Sean Lourette and 10 other authorsView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-01 Change to browse by: physics physics.app-ph physics.atom-ph physics.ins-det References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... 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