It was recalled that charged nitrogen-vacancy colour centers in diamond were

excellent luminescence sources for far-field fluorescence nanoscopy by stimulated

emission depletion. It was shown here that these photostable colour centers could

be visualized by stimulated emission depletion, using simple continuous-wave or

high repetition pulsed lasers (76MHz) at wavelengths >700nm for stimulated

emission depletion. Furthermore, it was shown that nitrogen-vacancy centers could

be imaged in three dimensions within the diamond crystal and present singlephoton

signatures of single colour centers recorded in high density samples,

demonstrating a new recording scheme for stimulated emission depletion and

related far-field nanoscopy approaches. Finally, the potential of using nanodiamonds

containing nitrogen-vacancy centers as luminescence tags in stimulated

emission depletion microscopy was demonstrated.

Three-Dimensional Stimulated Emission Depletion Microscopy of Nitrogen-

Vacancy Centers in Diamond Using Continuous-Wave Light. K.Y.Han, K.I.Willig,

E.Rittweger, F.Jelezko, C.Eggeling, W.Hell: Nano Letters, 2009, 9[9], 3323-9