| Abstract: | The nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond has attracted much attention in the past two decades as a promising candidate for quantum information processing, for nanoscale metrology, and as a realization of the central spin problem. I will describe our efforts to characterize the process of nuclear hyperpolarization in which an optically pumped NV-center transfers its polarization into the surrounding nuclear spins. In particular I will discuss a novel scheme that we have developed in our NV-center's laboratory enabling characterization of this multistep process of polarization transfer. |