Voltage controlled Oscillators for Quantum Sensing

Nitrogen vacancy defect centers are promising platform for quantum sensing. They have attracted attentions over the last 15 years. Their performance has been demonstrated in laboratory scale using expensive and bulky laser and microwave sources. There are ongoing efforts to make them miniaturized and portable for civilian, aerospace, geophysics and medical applications. We report using off the shelve voltage controlled oscillators as a reliable replacement of conventional microwave sources. They are cheap, small and consume low power. In combination with mixers, one can tune them to drive double quantum (DQ) resonances and compensate effect of thermal and magnetic drifts on sensors’ performance.