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We report an experimental study of the longitudinal relaxation time (T₁) of the electron spin associated with single nitrogen-vacancy (NV) defects hosted in nanodiamonds (NDs). We first show that T₁ decreases over three orders of magnitude when the ND size is reduced from 100 to 10 nm owing to the interaction of the NV electron spin with a bath of paramagnetic centers lying on the ND surface. We next tune the magnetic environment by decorating the ND surface with Gd^3+ ions and observe an efficient T₁ quenching, which demonstrates magnetic noise sensing with a single electron spin. We estimate a sensitivity down to 14 electron spins detected within 10 s, using a single NV defect hosted in a 10-nm-size ND. These results pave the way towards T₁-based nanoscale imaging of the spin density in biological samples.
Tetienne et al. (Thu,) studied this question.
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