14 research outputs found
A Diamond Nanowire Single Photon Antenna
The development of a robust light source that emits one photon at a time is
an outstanding challenge in quantum science and technology. Here, at the
transition from many to single photon optical communication systems, fully
quantum mechanical effects may be utilized to achieve new capabilities, most
notably perfectly secure communication via quantum cryptography. Practical
implementations place stringent requirements on the device properties,
including stable photon generation, room temperature operation, and efficient
extraction of many photons. Single photon light emitting devices based on
fluorescent dye molecules, quantum dots, and carbon nanotube material systems
have all been explored, but none have simultaneously demonstrated all criteria.
Here, we describe the design, fabrication, and characterization of a bright
source of single photons consisting of an individual Nitrogen-vacancy color
center (NV center) in a diamond nanowire operating in ambient conditions. The
nanowire plays a positive role in increasing the number of single photons
collected from the NV center by an order of magnitude over devices based on
bulk diamond crystals, and allows operation at an order of magnitude lower
power levels. This result enables a new class of nanostructured diamond devices
for room temperature photonic and quantum information processing applications,
and will also impact fields as diverse as biological and chemical sensing,
opto-mechanics, and scanning-probe microscopy.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures, v2: Includes improved reference list; modified
figure 1 to show a large array of NW and FDTD simulation of field profile;
direct experimental comparsion of several bulk/NW devices in figure
Enhanced Single Photon Emission from a Diamond-Silver Aperture
We have developed a scalable method for coupling single color centers in
diamond to plasmonic resonators and demonstrated Purcell enhancement of the
single photon emission rate of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers. Our structures
consist of single nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center-containing diamond nanoposts
embedded in a thin silver film. We have utilized the strong plasmon resonances
in the diamond-silver apertures to enhance the spontaneous emission of the
enclosed dipole. The devices were realized by a combination of ion implantation
and top-down nanofabrication techniques, which have enabled deterministic
coupling between single NV centers and the plasmonic modes for multiple devices
in parallel. The plasmon-enhanced NV centers exhibited over six-fold
improvements in spontaneous emission rate in comparison to bare nanoposts and
up to a factor of 3.6 in radiative lifetime reduction over bulk samples, with
comparable increases in photon counts. The hybrid diamond-plasmon system
presented here could provide a stable platform for the implementation of
diamond-based quantum information processing and magnetometry schemes.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figure