Dissipative Quantum Sensing with a Magnetometer Based on Nitrogen-Vacancy Centers in Diamond

Quantum sensing uses quantum systems as sensors to capture weak signals and is providing opportunities in science and technology. The biggest challenge in quantum sensing is decoherence due to the coupling between the sensor and the environment. The dissipation will destroy the quantum coherence and reduce the performance of the sensor. Here we show that quantum sensing can be realized under dissipation by engineering the steady state of the sensor. We demonstrate this protocol with a magnetometer based on ensemble nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond, while neither high-quality initialization or readout of the sensor nor sophisticated dynamical decoupling sequences are required. Thus our method provides a concise and decoherence-resistant means of quantum sensing. The frequency resolution and precision of our magnetometer are far beyond the coherence time of the sensor. Furthermore, we show that the dissipation can be engineered to improve the performance of our sensor. By increasing the laser pumping, magnetic signals in a broad audio-frequency band from dc up to 140 kHz can be tackled by our method. Besides the potential applications in magnetic sensing and imaging on the microscopic scale, our results may provide opportunities for improvement of a variety of high-precision spectroscopies based on other quantum sensors.