Modulation of a vector light field has played an important role in the research of nanophotonics. However, it is still a great challenge to accurately measure the three-dimensional vector distribution at nanoscale. Here, based on the interaction between the light field and atomic-sized nitrogen-vacancy (NV) color center in diamonds, we demonstrate an efficient method for vectorial mapping of the light-field distribution at nanoscale. Single NV centers with different but well-defined symmetry axes are selected and then interact with the same tightly focused light field. The excitation of a single NV center is related to the angle between the NV center axis and the polarization of the light field. Then the fluorescence patterns of different NV centers provide the information on the vectorial light field distribution. Subsequently analyzing the fluorescence patterns with the help of a deep neural network, the intensity and phase of the light-field vectorial components are fully reconstructed with nanometer resolution. The experimental results are in agreement with theoretical calculations. It demonstrates that our method can help to study light–matter interaction at nanoscale and extend the application of vector light fields in research on nanophotonics.

Nitrogen-vacancy color centers can perform highly sensitive and spatially resolved quantum measurements of physical quantities such as magnetic field, temperature, and pressure. Meanwhile, sensing so many variables at the same time often introduces additional noise, causing a reduced accuracy. Here, a dual-microwave time-division multiplexing protocol is used in conjunction with a lock-in amplifier in order to decouple temperature from the magnetic field and vice versa. In this protocol, dual-frequency driving and frequency modulation are used to measure the magnetic and temperature field simultaneously in real time. The sensitivity of our system is about 3.4nT/Hz and 1.3mK/Hz, respectively. Our detection protocol not only enables multifunctional quantum sensing, but also extends more practical applications.

The nitrogen vacancy (NV) center in diamond has been well applied in quantum sensing of electromagnetic field and temperature, where the sensitivity can be enhanced by the number of NV centers. Here, we used electron beam irradiation to increase the generation rate of NV centers by nearly 22 times. We systematically studied the optical and electronic properties of the NV center as a function of an electron irradiation dose, where the detection sensitivity of magnetic fields was improved. With such samples with dense NV centers, a sub-pico-Tesla sensitivity in magnetic fields detection can be achieved with optimal controls and detections.

The measurement of the second-order degree of coherence [g(2)(τ)] is one of the important methods used to study the dynamical evolution of photon-matter interaction systems. Here, we use a nitrogen-vacancy center in a diamond to compare the measurement of g(2)(τ) with two methods. One is the prototype measurement process with a tunable delay. The other is a start-stop process based on the time-to-amplitude conversion (TAC) and multichannel analyzer (MCA) system, which is usually applied to achieve efficient measurements. The divergence in the measurement results is observed when the delay time is comparable with the mean interval time between two neighboring detected photons. Moreover, a correction function is presented to correct the results from the TAC-MCA system to the genuine g(2)(τ). Such a correction method will provide a way to study the dynamics in photonic systems for quantum information techniques.