Probing Local Pressure Environment in Anvil Cells with Nitrogen-Vacancy (N-V-) Centers in Diamond

Important discoveries have frequently been made through studies of matter under high pressure. Conditions of the pressure environment are important for the interpretation of experimental results. Due to various restrictions inside the pressure cell, detailed information relevant to the pressure environment, such as the pressure distribution, can be hard to obtain experimentally. Here we present the study of pressure distributions inside the pressure medium under different experimental conditions with N -V^- centers in diamond particles as the sensor. These studies not only show a good spatial resolution, wide temperature and pressure working ranges, compatibility of the existing pressure cell design with the proposed method, but also demonstrate the usefulness to measure with these sensors as the pressure distribution is sensitive to various factors. The method and the results will benefit many disciplines such as material research and phase transitions in fluid dynamics.