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arXiv:1009.5844 · New Journal of Physics

Engineering chromium-related single photon emitters in single crystal diamonds

Igor Aharonovich, Stefania Castelletto, Brett C. Johnson, Jeffrey Colin McCallum, Steven Prawer

Published Apr 14, 2011• 36 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Color centers in diamond, as single photon emitters, are leading candidates for future quantum devices due to their room temperature operation and photostability. The recently discovered chromium-related centers are particularly attractive because they possess narrow bandwidth emission and a very short lifetime. In this paper, we investigate the fabrication methodologies for engineering these centers in monolithic diamond. We show that the emitters can be successfully fabricated by ion implantation of chromium in conjunction with oxygen or sulfur. Furthermore, our results indicate that the background nitrogen concentration is an important parameter, which governs the probability of success in generating these centers.

DOI
10.1088/1367-2630/13/4/045015

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•Jan 1, 2009•0 citations
Color centers in diamond, as single photon emitters, are leading candidates for future quantum devices due to their room temperature operation and photostability. The recently discovered chromium-related centers are particularly attractive because they possess narrow bandwidth emission and a very short lifetime. In this paper, we investigate the fabrication methodologies for engineering these centers in monolithic diamond. We show that the emitters can be successfully fabricated by ion implantation of chromium in conjunction with oxygen or sulfur. Furthermore, our results indicate that the background nitrogen concentration is an important parameter, which governs the probability of success in generating these centers.
Single photon emitters are core components of quantum technologies. In this work new family of emitters based on chromium impurities in diamond is presented. The emitters can be fabricated by ion implantation of chromium into bulk diamond or incorporated during the growth of diamond nanocrystals. The remarkable photo‐physical properties of these emitters include room temperature operation, narrow photoluminescence (PL) in the near infra red and ultra bright, fully polarized photon emission with count rate of 3.2×106 counts/s. These photo physical properties make the Cr centers ideal for quantum information processing, metrology, and cellular bio markers applications.
Controlled fabrication and identification of bright single-photon emitters is at the heart of quantum optics. Here we demonstrate controlled engineering of a chromium bright single-photon source in bulk diamond by ion implantation. The Cr center has fully polarized emission with a zero-phonon line centered at 749 nm, full width at half maximum of 4 nm, an extremely short lifetime of $\ensuremath{\sim}1\text{ }\text{ns}$, and a count rate of $0.5\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{6}\text{ }\text{counts}/\text{s}$. By combining the polarization measurements and the vibronic spectra, a model of the center has been proposed consisting of one interstitial chromium atom with a transition dipole along one of the ⟨100⟩⟨100⟩⟨100⟩ directions.
A detailed study of the photophysical properties of several chromium-related color centers produced within chemical vapor deposition diamond is presented. These emitters show narrow luminescence lines in the range of $740\ensuremath{-}770$ nm. Single-photon emission was verified with continuous and pulsed excitation with detected emission rates at saturation in the range of ($2\ensuremath{-}3$) $\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}$ 106{10}^{6}106 counts/s, while direct lifetime measurements reveal excited state lifetimes for the distinct centers ranging $1\ensuremath{-}14$ ns. In addition, a number of quantum emitters demonstrate two-level behavior with no bunching present in the second-order correlation function. The three-level systems revealed typically photoluminescence lines with width half-maximum of  4~4 4 nm while the two-level emitters have full width half-maximum of  10~10 10 nm at room temperature. In addition, the quantum efficiency of the two-level system was measured to be four times higher than that of the three-level system.
Diamond is emerging as an optical supermaterial, due to its wide transparency bandwidth, excellent thermooptic properties and most notably its stable, large dipole moment, room temperature, single photon emitting colour centres. In this paper we present recent progress in the characterization of non radiative and radiative decay in single impurities and the fabrication of hybrid diamond-tellurite optical structures.. First, we present direct imaging of the emission pattern of individual ion implanted chromium-based single photon emitters in diamond and measure their quantum efficiency. By comparing the decay rates from the single chromium emitters at different depths in the diamond crystal, we measured an average quantum efficiency of 28%. Second, a hybrid approach involving a soft glass tellurite host material has been introduced, allowing nitrogen-vacancy (NV-) diamond emitters to be built into an optical fibre. The potential of integrating Cr-related centres in hybrid optical structures is also discussed.
Individual color centers in diamond are promising for near-term quantum technologies including quantum key distribution and metrology. Here we show fabrication of a new color center which has photophysical properties surpassing those of the two main-stay centers, namely the nitrogen vacancy and NE8 centers. The new center is fabricated using focused ion beam implantation of nickel into isolated chemical vapor deposited diamond micro-crystals. Room temperature photoluminescence studies reveal a narrow emission in the near infrared region centered at 768 nm with a lifetime as short as 2 ns. Its focused ion beam compatibility opens the prospect to fabrication with nanometer resolution and realization of integrated quantum photonic devices. Preliminary investigations suggest that this center arises from an as-yet uncharacterized nickel-silicon complex.
Quantum communication and quantum metrology established a demand for an accessible solid state systems which can generate a stream of single photons on demand [1]. Although single photon emission has been demonstrated from quantum dots (QD)[1,2], single molecules [3] and nanowires [4], their practical operation is limited by the temperature or photostability. Diamond crystals, however, are the most promising platform for generation of robust, photo-stable, single photons at room temperature [5,6]. Nevertheless, out of more than 500 existing optical centers in diamond only three known centers demonstrated a clear single photon emission: the nitrogen-vacancy complex [6,7], the silicon-vacancy complex [8] and the nickel-nitrogen complex [9,10]. Recent progress in materials science and fabrication techniques of diamond color centers unveiled novel quantum emitters with photo-physical properties surpassing the current mainstream [11,12,13]. Consequently, the versatility of the diamond lattice to host various impurities which give luminescence signals lead to a dramatic discovery of ultra bright single photon emitters operating in the MHz regime [14]. These new centers, comparable with QD in terms of brightness [1], but have the tremendous advantage of their room temperature operation and photo-stability. Furthermore, it opened a new avenue to investigate essentially an unknown group of single photon emitters. A brief description of the fabrication methods and a detailed quantum optical characterization of this class of diamond emitters is the subject of this presentation. In particular we will present the photo-physical properties of a novel family of single photon emitters, most likely originated from Cr impurities within the chemical vapor deposition grown nano-diamond crystals. We concentrate on the typical emission lines in the range of 740 - 790 nm, which exhibit single photon emission with count rate in the range of 0.8-3.2 106 counts/s at the limit of infinite optical excitation power, and life time as short as 1 ns. Even more, some of the emitters exhibit a photon statistics without any photon bunching, indicating a two-level system with unitary quantum efficiency. We will also show preliminary results of a resonant excitation at 4 K. We will highlight future directions to optimize these sources and avenues to investigate the fundamental properties of these centers.