Interaction of muons with H2/H3-centres in diamond

We report on transverse field muon spin rotation measurements on a nitrogen-rich type Ia diamond, both before and after the conversion of some of the aggregated nitrogen centres to nitrogen-vacancy complexes known as H2/H3-centres. The prompt fractions f and the spin relaxation rates λ were determined for the diamagnetic (μd) and the paramagnetic (MuT) states in the temperature range 10–300 K. The production of the nitrogen-vacancy complexes had little effect on the parameters of the MuT state for which f and λ remained unchanged at approximately 30% and 4 μs−1, respectively. For the μd state, on the other hand, the formation of the H2/H3-centres resulted in an increase of the prompt fraction from 10(2)% to 20(3)%, and (for the first time) the spin relaxation rate showed a non-zero value of 0.020(3) μs−1. These results show evidence of strong μd interactions with the nitrogen-vacancy complexes in diamond, and suggest a more complex structure for this state than a bare μ+.