Light dark matter search with nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamonds

Abstract

We propose an approach to directly search for light dark matter, such as the axion or the dark photon, by using magnetometry with nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamonds. If the dark matter couples to the electron spin, it affects the evolution of the Bloch vectors consisting of the spin triplet states, which may be detected through several magnetometry techniques. We give several concrete examples with the use of dc and ac magnetometry and estimate the sensitivity on dark matter couplings.