Séminaire d'Institut

Tuesday 20 January 2026 à 10h30.

Probing nanomagnetism with a scanning NV center microscope / Exploring chirality with NV centers

Aurore Finco
(Laboratoire Charles Coulomb, Montpellier)

Salle de convivialité (1ère partie, 10h30 - 11h30) puis Salle de Séminaires Lippmann (11h30 - 12h)

Invité(e) par
Florent Tournus

présentera en 2 heures :

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Public seminar: Probing nanomagnetism with a scanning NV center microscope

I will provide an introduction to scanning NV microscopy, a quantum sensing technique relying on the Nitrogen-Vacancy center in diamond [1, 2]. This optically active defect allows quantitative and very sensitive measurements of both static and microwave magnetic fields, as well as magnetic noise. Furthermore, by integrating it into a scanning probe microscope, we are able to map all these quantities at the nanoscale. I will illustrate the performance and versatility of this technique with a few recent results on the imaging of complex magnetic textures [3, 4] and of spin waves in confined magnetic structures.

[1] Rondin et al, Reports on Progress in Physics 77, 056503 (2014)
[2] Finco and Jacques, APL Materials 11, 100901 (2023)
[3] Chaudron et al, Nature Materials 23, 905-911 (2023)
[4] Sfeir et al, Physical Review Materials 9, 114003 (2025)

Specialised seminar: Exploring chirality with NV centers

Going back to the exemples presented in the first talk, I will focus on “chiral” phenomena. I will start by discussing how the magnetic chirality of domain walls and skyrmions, fixed by the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction, is imprinted into the thermal magnetic noise originating from the sample [5]. In a second part, I will show that NV centers can discriminate between spin waves propagating in opposite directions through the circular polarization of the microwave magnetic field which they emit, allowing us to map separately but simultaneously different modes.

[5] Finco et al, Physical Review Letters 135, 136703 (2025)

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