An official website of the United States government
Single-photon emitters are essential in enabling several emerging applications in quantum information technology, quantum sensing, and quantum communication. Scalable photonic platforms capable of hosting intrinsic or embedded sources of single-photon emission are of particular interest for the realization of integrated quantum photonic circuits. Here, we report on the observation of room-temperature single-photon emitters in silicon nitride (SiN) films grown on silicon dioxide substrates. Photophysical analysis reveals bright (>10 5 counts/s), stable, linearly polarized, and pure quantum emitters in SiN films with a second-order autocorrelation function value at zero time delay g (2) (0) below 0.2 at room temperature. We suggest that the emission originates from a specific defect center in SiN because of the narrow wavelength distribution of the observed luminescence peak. Single-photon emitters in SiN have the potential to enable direct, scalable, and low-loss integration of quantum light sources with a well-established photonic on-chip platform.
more »
« less
Large-scale optical characterization of solid-state quantum emitters
Solid-state quantum emitters have emerged as a leading quantum memory for quantum networking applications. However, standard optical characterization techniques are neither efficient nor repeatable at scale. Here we introduce and demonstrate spectroscopic techniques that enable large-scale, automated characterization of colour centres. We first demonstrate the ability to track colour centres by registering them to a fabricated machine-readable global coordinate system, enabling a systematic comparison of the same colour centre sites over many experiments. We then implement resonant photoluminescence excitation in a widefield cryogenic microscope to parallelize resonant spectroscopy, achieving two orders of magnitude speed-up over confocal microscopy. Finally, we demonstrate automated chip-scale characterization of colour centres and devices at room temperature, imaging thousands of microscope fields of view. These tools will enable the accelerated identification of useful quantum emitters at chip scale, enabling advances in scaling up colour centre platforms for quantum information applications, materials science and device design and characterization.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1839155
- PAR ID:
- 10481217
- Publisher / Repository:
- Nature Materials
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Nature Materials
- Volume:
- 22
- Issue:
- 11
- ISSN:
- 1476-1122
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1338 to 1344
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Abstract Deterministic nanoassembly may enable unique integrated on‐chip quantum photonic devices. Such integration requires a careful large‐scale selection of nanoscale building blocks such as solid‐state single‐photon emitters by means of optical characterization. Second‐order autocorrelation is a cornerstone measurement that is particularly time‐consuming to realize on a large scale. Supervised machine learning‐based classification of quantum emitters as “single” or “not‐single” is implemented based on their sparse autocorrelation data. The method yields a classification accuracy of 95% within an integration time of less than a second, realizing roughly a 100‐fold speedup compared to the conventional Levenberg–Marquardt fitting approach. It is anticipated that machine learning‐based classification will provide a unique route to enable rapid and scalable assembly of quantum nanophotonic devices.more » « less
-
Integrating solid-state quantum emitters with photonic circuits is essential for realizing large-scale quantum photonic processors. Negatively charged tin-vacancy (SnV−) centers in diamond have emerged as promising candidates for quantum emitters because of their excellent optical and spin properties, including narrow-linewidth emission and long spin coherence times. SnV− centers need to be incorporated in optical waveguides for efficient onchip routing of the photons they generate. However, such integration has yet to be realized. In this Letter, we demonstrate the coupling of SnV− centers to a nanophotonic waveguide. We realize this device by leveraging our recently developed shallow ion implantation and growth method for the generation of high-quality SnV− centers and the advanced quasi-isotropic diamond fabrication technique. We confirm the compatibility and robustness of these techniques through successful coupling of narrow-linewidth SnV− centers (as narrow as 36 ± 2 MHz) to the diamond waveguide. Furthermore, we investigate the stability of waveguide-coupled SnV− centers under resonant excitation. Our results are an important step toward SnV−-based on-chip spin-photon interfaces, single-photon nonlinearity, and photon-mediated spin interactions.more » « less
-
High-contrast optically detected magnetic resonance is a valuable property for reading out the spin of isolated defect colour centres at room temperature. Spin-active single defect centres have been studied in wide bandgap materials including diamond, SiC and hexagonal boron nitride, each with associated advantages for applications. We report the discovery of optically detected magnetic resonance in two distinct species of bright, isolated defect centres hosted in GaN. In one group, we find negative optically detected magnetic resonance of a few percent associated with a metastable electronic state, whereas in the other, we find positive optically detected magnetic resonance of up to 30% associated with the ground and optically excited electronic states. We examine the spin symmetry axis of each defect species and establish coherent control over a single defect’s ground-state spin. Given the maturity of the semiconductor host, these results are promising for scalable and integrated quantum sensing applications.more » « less
-
Solid-state defect qubit systems with spin-photon interfaces show great promise for quantum information and metrology applications. Photon collection efficiency, however, presents a major challenge for defect qubits in high refractive index host materials. Inverse-design optimization of photonic devices enables unprecedented flexibility in tailoring critical parameters of a spin-photon interface including spectral response, photon polarization, and collection mode. Further, the design process can incorporate additional constraints, such as fabrication tolerance and material processing limitations. Here, we design and demonstrate a compact hybrid gallium phosphide on diamond inverse-design planar dielectric structure coupled to single near-surface nitrogen-vacancy centers formed by implantation and annealing. We observe up to a 14-fold broadband enhancement in photon extraction efficiency, in close agreement with simulations. We expect that such inverse-designed devices will enable realization of scalable arrays of single-photon emitters, rapid characterization of new quantum emitters, efficient sensing, and heralded entanglement schemes.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-023-01644-8
