High-Time-Resolution Nuclear Magnetic Resonance With Nitrogen-Vacancy Centers

We present a field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based solution for high-time-resolution nanoscale nuclear magnetic resonance, with nitrogen-vacancy centers as a probe. The Xilinx FPGA is used to implement a high-performance pulse generator, which contributes to high-precision measurement for the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) signal. The pulse generator outputs continuous pulses with a time resolution of 50 ps and a dynamic range of 5 ns to 2.68 s. The central control and the readout logics for the NMR experiment are fully implemented in the FPGA. We observed nanoscale NMR signals of hydrogen atoms by measuring the period of the Larmor precession with a 50 ps time resolution. Furthermore, we demonstrate the ability to distinguish signals of adjacent frequencies, which is a great advantage in high-resolution analysis for the nanoscale NMR.