Resonant Excitation of Quantum Emitters in Hexagonal Boron Nitride

Abstract

© 2017 American Chemical Society. Quantum emitters in layered hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) have recently attracted a great deal of attention as promising single photon sources. In this work, we demonstrate resonant excitation of a single defect center in hBN, one of the most important prerequisites for employment of optical sources in quantum information processing applications. We observe spectral line widths of an hBN emitter narrower than 1 GHz while the emitter experiences spectral diffusion. Temporal photoluminescence measurements reveal an average spectral diffusion time of around 100 ms. An on-resonance photon antibunching measurement is also realized. Our results shed light on the potential use of quantum emitters from hBN in nanophotonics and quantum information processing applications