We report on a new regime for optical trapping of diamond nanoparticles in liquid. While holding a nanodiamond (~150 nm) containing many NV centres (~10^3) at the focus of classical optical tweezers, we add a second laser slightly detuned from the dipole transition of the NVs. We measure a change in trap stiffness of ~10%. Remarkably, we show that our results must include collective effects – ‘superradiance’ – between colour centres, which has never been reported before for solid-state systems at room temperature. We discuss how these resonant forces depend on (and can be enhanced by) the type, number, dipole strength and spectral linewidth of the centres.

Date Published: 9 December 2016
PDF: 1 pages
Proc. SPIE 10013, SPIE BioPhotonics Australasia, 1001334 (9 December 2016); doi: 10.1117/12.2242963

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 10013:
SPIE BioPhotonics Australasia
Mark R. Hutchinson; Ewa M. Goldys, Editor(s)