Strong driving of a single spin using arbitrarily polarized fields

The strong-driving regime occurs when a quantum two-level system is driven with an external field whose amplitude is greater than or equal to the energy splitting between the system's states and is typically identified with the breaking of the rotating wave approximation (RWA). We report an experimental study in which the spin of a single nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond is strongly driven with microwave fields of arbitrary polarization. We measure the NV center spin dynamics beyond the RWA and characterize the limitations of this technique for generating high-fidelity quantum gates. Using circularly polarized microwave fields, the NV spin can be harmonically driven in its rotating frame regardless of the field amplitude, thus allowing rotations around arbitrary axes. Our approach can effectively remove the RWA limit in quantum-sensing schemes and assist in increasing the number of operations in QIP protocols.