Nuclear Magnetic Resonance with a Levitating Microparticle

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spans diverse fields from biology to quantum science. Employing NMR on a floating object could unveil novel possibilities beyond conventional operational paradigms. Here, we observe NMR within a levitating microdiamond using the nuclear spins of nitrogen-14 atoms. By tightly confining the angular degrees of freedom of the diamond in a Paul trap, we achieve efficient hyperfine interaction between optically polarized electronic spins of nitrogen-vacancy centers and the ^{14}N nuclear spin, enabling nuclear spin polarization and quantum state readout revealing coherence times up to hundreds of microseconds. This represents the longest recorded spin coherence time in a levitated system, surpassing previous records by 3 orders of magnitude. Our results offer promise for various applications, including cooling macroscopic particles to their motional ground state and exploring geometric phases for gyroscopy.