A solid-state approach for quantum networks is advantageous, as it allows the integration of nanophotonics to enhance the photon emission and the utilization of weakly coupled nuclear spins for long-lived storage. Silicon carbide, specifically point defects within it, shows great promise in this regard due to the easy of availability and well-established nanofabrication techniques. Despite of remarkable progresses made, achieving spin-photon entanglement remains a crucial aspect to be realized. In this Letter, we experimentally generate entanglement between a silicon vacancy defect in silicon carbide and a scattered single photon in the zero-phonon line. The spin state is measured by detecting photons scattered in the phonon sideband. The photonic qubit is encoded in the time-bin degree of freedom and measured using an unbalanced Mach-Zehnder interferometer. Photonic correlations not only reveal the quality of the entanglement but also verify the deterministic nature of the entanglement creation process. By harnessing two pairs of such spin-photon entanglement, it becomes straightforward to entangle remote quantum nodes at long distance.
Distributed quantum networks rely on spatially separated, independently operated quantum systems as network nodes, whose emitted photons must be interfered with high visibility to establish end-to-end entanglement. Crucially, for network-relevant applications, high visibilities must be achieved over prolonged timescales to reduce overheads for error correction, and to increase network rates. Here, we demonstrate experimentally that silicon vacancy
VSi color centers in silicon carbide (SiC) achieve these requirements, notably in a mass-deployable fashion. We integrate
VSi centers in different industrial-grade SiC p-i-n diodes, which are controlled via voltage biassing. This way, we demonstrate both, spectral overlapping of 19 randomly selected
VSi centers in different diodes, as well as spectral narrowing close to the lifetime limit, i.e., typically below 60 MHz. Notably, these performance parameters are long-term stable, e.g., readjusting the p-i-n diode bias is required only every 8.4 hours, which reduces significantly the overall experimental overhead. We then use these assets to demonstrate high-quality two-photon interference between
VSi centers located in two different cryostat setups, which are spatially separated by two meters. Notably, we perform a 26-days long measurement campaign, demonstrating two-photon interference with state-of-the-art raw interference visibilities of 82%, which aligns with the current state-of-the-art. These results establish
VSi centers in industry-grade SiC devices as a scalable, spectrally stable building block for distributed quantum networks.
Abstract Silicon carbide (SiC) is an excellent industrially compatible material, which has been widely used in high power electronic devices. Recently, spin defects in SiC have been found to be a high-quality spin-to-photon interface with long spin coherence time and high spin-selective optical transition. Spin states can be initialized and readout with extremely high fidelity. The infrared and even telecom fluorescence is suited for fiber communication with less scatting loss. The bandwidth of intrinsic zero-phonon-line emission can be manipulated by classical electrical devices. The achieved near lifetime-limited optical linewidths greatly increase the indistinguishability of photon emission and facilitate the connection with other narrowband absorption quantum systems, such as cold atoms, trapped ions, and rare-earth dopants in crystals. Moreover, spin defects coupled with photonic nanocavities have been demonstrated, which can greatly enhance the photon emission in the zero-phonon-line. The realization of controllable electron-nuclear spin entanglement further extends the memory-based quantum applications. In this perspective, we will briefly discuss the most recent development of spin defects in SiC. These results show that spin defects in SiC are desirable quantum platforms for quantum networking applications. We also discuss some of the current challenges and possible future development.
Abstract Entanglement plays a vital role in quantum information processing. Owing to its unique material properties, silicon carbide recently emerged as a promising candidate for the scalable implementation of advanced quantum information processing capabilities. To date, however, in silicon carbide only entanglement of nuclear spins has been reported, while an entangled photon source, whether it is based on bulk or chip-scale technologies, remains elusive. Here, we report the first demonstration of an entangled photon source in an integrated silicon carbide platform. Specifically, strongly correlated photon pairs are efficiently generated at the telecom C-band wavelength through implementing spontaneous four-wave mixing in a compact microring resonator in the 4H-silicon-carbide-on-insulator platform. Energy-time entanglement is created and verified for such signal-idler photon pairs, with the two-photon interference fringes exhibiting a visibility larger than 99%. The heralded single-photon properties are also measured, with the heralded g (2) (0) on the order of 10 − 3 , demonstrating the CMOS-compatible integrated platform as a prospective fully integrated CMOS-compatible single-photon source for quantum applications.
Quantum networks promise secure communication, distributed sensing and modular quantum computing by interconnecting distant quantum nodes through photonic links. Extending such networks beyond metropolitan distances requires quantum repeaters to overcome the exponential attenuation of photons in optical fiber. Across all architectures, a key requirement is the indistinguishability of single photons, which directly impacts the fidelity of photonic operations based on two-photon interference, such as Bell-state measurements and fusion gates. Here, we demonstrate generation of highly indistinguishable single photons from a coherently excited tin-vacancy center in diamond, achieving raw Hong-Ou-Mandel interference visibilities exceeding 0.95. By separating intrinsic emitter properties from technical imperfections, we show that decoherence plays a negligible role and that the remaining limitations are predominantly technical in nature, arriving at an intrinsic indistinguishability of up to 0.999. We further show that quantum frequency conversion to the telecom C-band preserves the photon indistinguishability. In combination with the long-lived electron and nuclear spin coherence times, these results establish tin-vacancy centers in diamond as a competitive platform for long-distance quantum networks and photonic quantum information processing. We further substantiate this potential through Monte Carlo simulations of a quantum-repeater link, demonstrating that the SnV-center platform surpasses the bound set by direct transmission.
Optically active solid-state spin registers have demonstrated their unique potential in quantum computing, communication, and sensing. Realizing scalability and increasing application complexity require entangling multiple individual systems, e.g., via photon interference in an optical network. However, most solid-state emitters show relatively broad spectral distributions, which hinders optical interference experiments. Here, we demonstrate that silicon vacancy centers in semiconductor silicon carbide (SiC) provide a remarkably small natural distribution of their optical absorption/emission lines despite an elevated defect concentration of ≈0.43 μm−3. In particular, without any external tuning mechanism, we show that only 13 defects have to be investigated until at least two optical lines overlap within the lifetime-limited linewidth. Moreover, we identify emitters with overlapping emission profiles within diffraction-limited excitation spots, for which we introduce simplified schemes for the generation of computationally relevant Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger and cluster states. Our results underline the potential of the CMOS-compatible SiC platform toward realizing networked quantum technology applications.