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Nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond is an ideal candidate for quantum sensors because of its excellent optical and coherence property. However, previous studies are usually conducted at low or room temperature. The lack of full knowledge of coherence properties of the NV center at high temperature limits NV's further applications. Here, we systematically explore the coherence properties of the NV center ensemble at temperatures from 300 K to 600 K. Coherence time $T_2$ decreases rapidly from $184 \mu s$ at 300 K to $30 \mu s$ at 600 K, which is attributed to the interaction with paramagnetic impurities. Single-quantum and double-quantum relaxation rates show an obvious temperature-dependent behavior as well, and both of them are dominated by the two phonon Raman process. While the inhomogeneous dephasing time $T_2^*$ and thermal echo decoherence time $T_{TE}$ remain almost unchanged as temperature rises. Since $T_{TE}$ changed slightly as temperature rises, a thermal-echo-based thermometer is demonstrated to have a sensitivity of $41 mK/\sqrt{Hz}$ at 450 K. These findings will help to pave the way toward NV-based high-temperature sensing, as well as to have a more comprehensive understanding of the origin of decoherence in the solid-state qubit., Comment: 7 pagees, 5 figures

By efficient nanoscale plasma etching, the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond were brought to the sample surface step by step successfully. At each depth, we used the relative ratios of spin coherence times before and after applying external spins on the surface to present the decoherence, and investigated the relationships between depth and ratios. The values of relative ratios declined and then rised with the decreasing depth, which was attributed to the decoherence influenced by external spins, surface spins, discrete surface spin effects and electric field noise. Moreover, our work revealed a characteristic depth at which the NV center would experience relatively the strongest decoherence caused by external spins in consideration of inevitable surface spins. And the characteristic depth was found depending on the adjacent environments of NV centers and the density of surface spins., Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures

We investigated the depth dependence of coherence times of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers through precisely depth controlling by a moderately oxidative at 580{\deg}C in air. By successive nanoscale etching, NV centers could be brought close to the diamond surface step by step, which enable us to trace the evolution of the number of NV centers remained in the chip and to study the depth dependence of coherence times of NV centers with the diamond etching. Our results showed that the coherence times of NV centers declined rapidly with the depth reduction in their last about 22 nm before they finally disappeared, revealing a critical depth for the influence of rapid fluctuating surface spin bath. By monitoring the coherence time variation with depth, we could make a shallow NV center with long coherence time for detecting external spins with high sensitivity.

We presented a high-sensitivity temperature detection using an implanted single Nitrogen-Vacancy center array in diamond. The high-order Thermal Carr-Purcell-Meiboom-Gill (TCPMG) method was performed on the implanted single nitrogen vacancy (NV) center in diamond in a static magnetic field. We demonstrated that under small detunings for the two driving microwave frequencies, the oscillation frequency of the induced fluorescence of the NV center equals approximately to the average of the detunings of the two driving fields. On basis of the conclusion, the zero-field splitting D for the NV center and the corresponding temperature could be determined. The experiment showed that the coherence time for the high-order TCPMG was effectively extended, particularly up to 108 {\mu}s for TCPMG-8, about 14 times of the value 7.7 {\mu}s for thermal Ramsey method. This coherence time corresponded to a thermal sensitivity of 10.1 mK/Hz1/2. We also detected the temperature distribution on the surface of a diamond chip in three different circumstances by using the implanted NV center array with the TCPMG-3 method. The experiment implies the feasibility for using implanted NV centers in high-quality diamonds to detect temperatures in biology, chemistry, material science and microelectronic system with high-sensitivity and nanoscale resolution., Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures