Quantum Imaging Of Artificial NV Centers

As a bridge for human to understand microworld, optical microscope is a basic tool in many modern fields such as bioscience, nanotechnology and chip industry. Res-olution of microscopy is increasingly demanded along with research and manufacture accessing nanoscale, therefore super-resolution imaging is becoming an urgent need for optical microscopy. Different imaging schemes are designed to breaking diffrac-tion limit; many of them are realized and applied in scientific research. However, these methods are usually restricted to special conditions and there’re various limitations in each of them.From physical measurement perspective, imaging process is measurements of po-sitions of different particles, and the imaging resolution depends on information obtain-ing by measurement. The development of quantum information provides new method for optical imaging:for one hand, quantum theory proposes quantum measurement which has a better precision than classical measurement; for other hand, quantum in-formation technology supports nonclassical light source and new detecting schemes. Single photon source has antibunching effect which is quantum phenomenon providing nonclassical information, so we can design proper schemes to get better measurement precision with the aid of antibunching measurement. These schemes have certain uni-versality since single photon source can be a fluorophor which is the elementary unit of fluorescent material. This thesis research quantum imaging schemes based on single photon source, trying to open a new window to optical super-resolution imaging.Nitrogen vacancy center (NV center) in diamond is a good single photon source, which has photostability and can be artificially prepared. We realized generating single NV centers at nanoscale in by combing ion implantation and electron beam lithography processing. Employing the artificial NV centers, quantum imaging schemes based on single photon source are performed.First, we propose and realize quantum statically imaging (QSI) method to distin-guish two particles with arbitrary precision. QSI is not restricted by diffraction limit, a resolution of2.4nm is achieved in experiment, and it still can be improved down to one nanometer if sufficient photons are detected. In addition to this, QSI method can be applied to other physical parameters measurement and distinguish, such as distinguish of polarization of two emitters. Moreover, QSI method can also be used in research on dynamic process of nearby objects, providing a new measurement method for realiz-ing quantum information, which can be applied in chemistry, material and bioscience research.Furthermore, we realized quantum correlation imaging (QCI) scheme to improve imaging resolution. QCI can improve the resolution of entire image without the restric-tion of number of single photon sources. The improvement of resolution depends on the detected correlation order. QCI is simple:increasing resolution only needs a flu-orescence photon correlation module, which is easily added to a commercial confocal microscopy system. Comparing with a classical image, singe photon image and two photon image obtained by correlation measurement provide more information, it not only can be used in the resolution improvement, but also can be used to digital image process, which can develop new imaging processing method.