Optimizing Oscilloscope based Acquisition for Pulsed Optically Detected Magnetic Resonance Measurements

Ensembles of nitrogen vacancy (NV) defect centers in diamond have emerged as a promising platform for fundamental studies and applications in quantum sensing and quantum information processing. Here, we demonstrate the use of a digital oscilloscope for acquiring pulsed optically detected magnetic resonance (ODMR) data from an ensemble of NV centers in diamond. The oscilloscope facilitates improved signal visualization, and simplifies system debugging. We show that on-board waveform averaging in the oscilloscope enables more efficient measurements. The detection scheme, and data processing are optimized to allow fast acquisition of high quality data. The system noise, and its impact on the measurements is analyzed in detail. The data processing method is shown to effectively suppress a broad range of noise spectral components, thereby reducing the total noise in the processed data. Furthermore, the introduction of an analog low pass filter in the signal path is shown to improve the measurement by removing aliasing. The framework developed in this work can be extended to other detection techniques and material platforms for ODMR. We expect that the insights developed here will guide the design, and development of dedicated instruments for ODMR in future.