Over the past two decades, a major research effort has focused on defects called nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers that can be introduced into diamond. These defects make excellent quantum sensors because their electron spins are highly sensitive to magnetic, electric, and thermal fields. And they have potential applications in quantum information processing, as their spins can be optically polarized at room temperature and have long lifetimes and coherence times. Now Gabriel Hétet and his colleagues at the École Normale Supérieure in France have shown how NV centers can also generate a spin-dependent force that is strong enough to bend a cantilever [1]. This force might offer insights into the interplay between quantum physics and classical physics.
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