Creation of NV centers over a millimeter-sized region by intense single-shot ultrashort laser irradiation

Recently, ultrashort laser processing has attracted attention for creating nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers because this method can create single NV centers in spatially-controlled positions, which is an advantage for quantum information devices. On the other hand, creating high-density NV centers in a wide region is also important for quantum sensing because the sensitivity is directly enhanced by increasing the number of NV centers. A recent study demonstrated the creation of high-density NV centers by irradiating femtosecond laser pulses, but the created region was limited to micrometer size, and this technique required many laser pulses to avoid graphitization of diamond. Here, we demonstrate the creation of NV centers in a wide region using only an intense single femtosecond laser pulse irradiation. We irradiated a diamond sample with a femtosecond laser with a focal spot size of 41 µm and a laser fluence of up to 54 J/cm2, which is much higher than the typical graphitization threshold in multi-pulse processing. We found that single-pulse irradiation created NV centers without post-annealing for a laser fluence higher than 1.8 J/cm2, and the region containing NV centers expanded with increasing laser fluence. The diameter of the area was larger than the focal spot size and reached over 100 µm at a fluence of 54 J/cm2. Furthermore, we demonstrated the NV centers’ creation in a millimeter-sized region by a single-shot defocused laser pulse over 1100 µm with a fluence of 33 J/cm2. The demonstrated technique will bring interest in the fundamentals and applications of fabricating ultrahigh-sensitivity quantum sensors.