Detection and manipulation of single spin of nitrogen vacancy center in diamond toward application of weak measurement

A nitrogen vacancy (NV) center in diamond is studied as a solid state spin system realizing quantum information processing. In order to make such a system work as a qubit or a quantum memory, it is essential to have a full knowledge of interactions between the spins. Focusing on the properties of the NV center, of which the electron spin is experimentally accessible and can be transferred to a single nuclear spin, dynamics and interactions between the single spins can be known to the full extent. We aim at measuring a change of state of the single nuclear spin upon interaction with single NV electron spin in a short time interval. It corresponds to the weak measurement initiated by Aharonov et al., and through such a measurement the hyperfine interaction between the NV electron spin and the nuclear spin can be determined. As a first step toward such an experimental application of the weak measurement scheme, we carried out the detection of single NV centers with confocal laser microscopy and the measurement of the second-order autocorrelation function. We undertook an optically detected magnetic resonance (ODMR) to manipulate and read out the electron spin state and evaluated the static magnetic field applied at the single NV center from obtained ODMR spectra.