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Nature Methods 5, 998 (1 December 2008) | doi:10.1038/nmeth1208-998

Diamonds are a spectroscopist's best friend

Allison Doerr

A common, yellowish diamond impurity called a nitrogen-vacancy center decreases diamonds' value as jewels, but the groups of Fedor Jelezko of the Universit|[auml]|t Stuttgart and Mikhail Lukin of Harvard University recently showed that this impurity has exceptional value for novel spectroscopic applications. The strong, stable fluorescence of nitrogen-vacancy centers and nontoxicity of diamond are useful for optical imaging.