Characterization of the photon emission statistics in nitrogen-vacancy centers

We model and experimentally demonstrate the full time-dependent counting statistics of photons emitted by a single nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond under non-resonant laser excitation and resonant microwave control. A generalization of the quantum jump formalism for the seven electronic states involved in the fast intrinsic dynamics of an NV center provides a self-contained model that allows for the characterization of its emission and clarifies the relation between the quantum system internal states and the measurable detected photon counts. The model allows the elaboration of detection protocols to optimize the energy and time resources while maximizing the system sensitivity to magnetic-field measurements.