It was recently demonstrated that bulk nuclear polarization can be obtained using Nitrogen Vacancy (NV) color centers in diamonds, even at ambient conditions. This is based on the optical polarization of the NV electron spin, and using several polarization transfer methods. One such method is the NOVEL sequence, where a spin-locked sequence is applied on the NV spin, with a microwave power equal to the nuclear precession frequency. This was performed at relatively high fields, to allow for both polarization transfer and noise decoupling. As a result, this scheme requires accurate magnetic field alignment in order preserve the NV properties. Such a requirement may be undesired or impractical in many practical scenareios. Here we present a new sequence, termed the refocused NOVEL, which can be used for polarization transfer (and detection) even at low fields. Numerical simulations are performed, taking into account both the spin Hamiltonian and spin-decoherence, and we show that, under realistic parameters, it can outperform the NOVEL sequence. [2,3] due to its ability to dramatically increase the signals in nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) and imaging (MRI) experiments. This relies on polarization transfer from electrons to their neighboring nuclei via microwave (MW) irradiation. The DNP process is typically performed at cryogenic temperatures, in order to gain high initial electron Boltzmann polarization. An alternative approach is to use high non-equilibrium polarization [4,5], allowing high polarizations to be achieved even at ambient conditions. It was recently demonstrated that NitrogenVacancy (NV) color centers in diamond [6][7][8] can be used as such a polarization source, based on the ability to polarize the NV electronic S = 1 spin to its |0 ground state using optical illumination with 532 nm green light. Such an NV based polarization source offers many advantages: it allows fast electron polarization; it is extremely stable; it can be used in combination with coherent polarization schemes due to the NV spin long coherence times [9]; and it relies on a relatively simple experimental setup. Nevertheless, polarization transfer to nuclei outside of the diamond itself still poses many challenges. It was also shown that nuclear polarization can improve NV based measurements, by increasing the NV spin free evolution/Ramsey coherence time [10].
Dynamic Nuclear Polarization (DNP) [1] has gained renewed interest in recent yearsNV based polarization of 13 C nuclei in the diamond can be achieved using the NOVEL (nuclear orientation via electron spin locking) scheme [11,12], allowing for nuclear sensing [10] and bulk polarization [13]. During this sequence a spin-lock [14] (SL) is applied on the NV spin with a SL Rabi frequency equal to the nuclear Larmor frequency, resulting in the rotating-frame/lab-frame Hartmann-Hahn polarization transfer condition. These NV based experiments were performed at relatively high fields (around 5000 Gauss) to allow for efficient SL noise decoupling together with the Har...