All-optical single-nanoparticle ratiometric thermometry with a noise floor of 0.3 K Hz^−1/2

Abstract

We demonstrate a temperature noise floor of 0.3 K Hz(-1/2) and a long-term stability better than 0.6 K (peak-to-peak value) using a single crystal of diamond smaller than 50 nm across and containing about 100 nitrogen-vacancy centres as a temperature sensor. We compare the achieved characteristics to other single-particle sensors and show that it is one of the best ratiometric all-optical nano-probes of temperature to date.