Nanoscale fluorescence lifetime imaging with a single diamond NV center

Solid-state quantum emitters, such as artificially engineered quantum dots or naturally occurring defects in solids, are being investigated for applications ranging from quantum information science and optoelectronics to biomedical imaging. Recently, these same systems have also been studied from the perspective of nanoscale metrology. In this letter we study the near-field optical properties of a diamond nanocrystal hosting a single nitrogen vacancy center. We find that the nitrogen vacancy center is a sensitive probe of the surrounding electromagnetic mode structure. We exploit this sensitivity to demonstrate nanoscale fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM) with a single nitrogen vacancy center by imaging the local density of states of an optical antenna.