Estimating the magnetic moment of microscopic magnetic sources from their magnetic field distribution in a layer of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centres in diamond

We have used a synthetic diamond with a layer of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centres to image the magnetic field distributions of magnetic particles on the surface of the diamond. Magnetic field distributions of 4 μm and 2 μm ferromagnetic and 500 nm diameter superparamagnetic particles were obtained by measuring the position of the optically detected magnetic resonance peak in the fluorescence emitted by the NV centres for each pixel. We fitted the results to a model in order to determine the magnetic moment of the particles from the magnetic field image and compared the results to the measured magnetic moment of the particles. The best-fit magnetic moment differed from the value expected based on measurements by a vibrating sample magnetometer, which implies that further work is necessary to understand the details of magnetic field measurements on the micro scale. However, the measurements of two different types of ferromagnetic particle gave internally consistent results.