Scalable quantum information processing using nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond will be difficult without the ability to couple the centers to optical microcavities and waveguides. Here we present our preliminary result of coupling a single NV center in a nanoparticle to a silica microdisk at cryogenic temperatures. The cavity-coupled NV photoluminescence is coupled out of the cavity through a tapered fiber. Although the current system is limited by the spectral properties of the NV center and the Q of the cavity, efficient particle-cavity and cavity-waveguide coupling should lead to the realization of a "one-dimensional atom" as needed for CQED, enable single-shot electron-spin readout, and increase the probability of success in entanglement schemes based on single-photon detection.
Scalable quantum information processing using nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond will be difficult without the ability to couple the centers to optical microcavities and waveguides. Here we present our preliminary result of coupling a single NV center in a nanoparticle to a silica microdisk at cryogenic temperatures. The cavity-coupled NV photoluminescence is coupled out of the cavity through a tapered fiber. Although the current system is limited by the spectral properties of the NV center and the Q of the cavity, efficient particle-cavity and cavity-waveguide coupling should lead to the realization of a "one-dimensional atom" as needed for CQED, enable single-shot electron-spin readout, and increase the probability of success in entanglement schemes based on single-photon detection.
For cavity quantum electrodynamics systems (cavity-QED) to play a role in quantum information processing applications and in quantum networks, they must be robust and scalable in addition to having a suitable method for the generation, processing and storage of quantum bits. One solution is to develop a composite system that couples a nitrogen vacancy (NV) center in diamond to a whispering gallery mode supported by a fused silica microsphere. Such a system is motivated by the optical and electron-spin properties of the NV center. The NV center is the leading spin-qubit and exhibits atomic like linewidths at cryogenic temperatures and has spin coherence times greater than milliseconds at room temperature. These long coherence times, coupled with nanosecond scale spin readout and manipulation times, allow for millions of quantum operations to be processed. Silica whispering gallery resonators are the only class of microresonators with quality factor high enough to reach the strong coupling regime, which is necessary for some quantum information processing applications. \n \nIntegrating these two components into a system that could position a diamond nanopillar near the surface of a deformed-double stemmed microsphere system, with nanometer precision, at 10 K was a major achievement of this research. Cavity resonances in deformed microspheres can be excited with a free-space coupling technique which simplifies their integration into cryogenic environments. In these intentionally deformed resonators, an enhanced evanescent field decay length was observed at specific locations along the ray orbit. The double-stem arrangement enables the cavity resonance to be tuned over 450 GHz, with sub-10 MHz resolution, at 10 K. These two features, the enhanced decay length and broad range tuning with high resolution, are indispensible tools for cavity-QED studies with silica microspheres. \n \nDiamond nanopillars were fabricated from single crystal diamond with diameters as small as 140 nm in order to maintain a high quality factor. Studies were conducted on NV centers in nanopillars and bulk diamond to determine their suitability for cavity-QED applications. In an attempt to increase the light-matter interaction between NV centers and whispering gallery modes, diamond substrates were optically characterized that were irradiated with nitrogen ions.
A central goal in quantum information science is to efficiently interface photons with single optical modes for quantum networking and distributed quantum computing. Here, we introduce and experimentally demonstrate a compact and efficient method for the low-loss coupling of a solid-state qubit, the nitrogen vacancy (NV) center in diamond, with a single-mode optical fiber. In this approach, single-mode tapered diamond waveguides containing exactly one high quality NV memory are selected and integrated on tapered silica fibers. Numerical optimization of an adiabatic coupler indicates that near-unity-efficiency photon transfer is possible between the two modes. Experimentally, we find an overall collection efficiency between 16% and 37% and estimate a single photon count rate at saturation above 700 kHz. This integrated system enables robust, alignment-free, and efficient interfacing of single-mode optical fibers with single photon emitters and quantum memories in solids. A compact way to efficiently couple a solid-state qubit, the nitrogen vacancy center in diamond, with a single-mode optical fiber is shown. The ability to efficiently couple stationary quantum memories to a single spatial mode in a silica fiber is highly desired for various applications in quantum information processing. Now, Rishi Patel and co-workers, working in the group of Dirk Englund at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have proposed and experimentally demonstrated an approach involving adiabatic power transfer between a tapered silica fiber and a single-mode micro-waveguide made from high-quality diamond. This integrated diamond–silica waveguide system enables optical collection from nitrogen vacancy centers with overall efficiencies in the range 16%–37%—a roughly four-fold improvement over previous approaches that employed diamond point emitters rather than waveguiding structures. Numerical optimization analysis suggests that near-unity efficiencies are theoretically feasible.
Chip integration of quantum emitters is a crucial milestone for scalable quantum photonic information processing. Among optically active defect centers for quantum photonics, diamond color centers are promising because of their long spin coherence times and high photon emission rates. However, for a coherent-photon emission, they typically require a cryogenic environment to protect optical coherence from thermal phonons, which makes chip integration challenging. In this paper, we develop a chip-integrated diamond photonic crystal cavity embedding an ensemble of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers. We confirm cryogenic operation by observing Purcell enhancement of NV-center emission via an edge-coupled optical fiber. This result demonstrates successful integration of diamond color centers, a photonic crystal cavity, and an optical waveguide-fiber package, representing a key step toward scalable diamond-based quantum communication platforms.
A quantumnetwork would allow the distribution of a quantum state over many spatially separated quantum nodes which individually possess the ability to generate, process and store quantum information. Connecting these nodes through quantum communication channels would enable sending quantum information over arbitrarily long distances, secret key distribution with guaranteed secure communication and distributed quantum computing. An appealing platform for implementation of quantum networks is the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond. An NV center is an optically active defect in diamond created by the substitution of two adjacent carbon atoms in the diamond crystal matrix by a nitrogen atom and a neighboring vacancy. The NV center fits remarkably well in the described quantum network framework. Its electronic spin can be optically initialized, read out in a single shot, coherently manipulated and coupled to the nearby carbon-13 nuclear spins. These properties represent necessary ingredients of a multi-qubit quantum node. The possibility of the entanglement between the state of the NV center spin and a photon establishes a photonic quantum link which can enable the entanglement of the quantum nodes, forming a quantum network. First building blocks of the proposed quantum networks based on NV centers were demonstrated by performing entanglement between two distant NV centers separated by more than a kilometer. However, the current success rate of the entangling protocols is greatly reduced due to the low emission probability of the NV center photons into the resonant zero phonon line (ZPL) and the inefficient photon extraction from the diamond. This is the central problem which prevents promoting our experiments beyond proof-of-principle demonstration towards practical implementation of the proposed quantumnetworks. The goal of this thesis is tackling these issues by coupling NV centers to optical cavities which would greatly increase the rate of generation and collection of the ZPL photons through themechanism of Purcell enhancement. The design and the fabrication of the components constituting a diamond-basedFabry-Perot microcavity, as used in this thesis, are described in Chapter 4. For large enhancement of the NV center resonant emission, a low cavity mode volume is necessary. This is achieved by inserting a micrometers thin diamond slab into the cavity architecture; we present the fabrication details of such samples. Chapter 5 describes the fabrication of an integrated platform for microwave signal delivery to the NV centers within a diamond membrane in the cavity architecture. Microwave striplines and arrays of unique markers are embedded in the mirror onto which the diamond is bonded. We investigate the mirror optical properties post fabrication and find that the fabrication method preserves the mirror optical performance. We describe the diamond bonding method and demonstrate addressing of the NV center spin. In Chapter 6 we probe the properties of the cavity with the embedded diamond membrane through measurements of the cavity finesse. We investigate the cavity finesse dependence on length, mode structure and temperature. We further explore the operation at cryogenic temperatures by probing the effect of cryostation vibration on the cavity linewidth. Finally, in Chapter 7 we discuss ways of improving the existing experimental capabilities, outline the first steps for demonstrating enhancement of the NV center resonant emission and suggest future experiments that can be performed with this system. We conclude that coupling of the NV centers to the cavities developed in this research could lead to an increase of remote entanglement success rates by more than three orders of magnitude.
A central goal in quantum information science is to efficiently interface photons with single optical modes for quantum networking and distributed quantum computing. Here, we introduce and experimentally demonstrate a compact and efficient method for the low-loss coupling of a solid-state qubit, the nitrogen vacancy (NV) center in diamond, with a single-mode optical fiber. In this approach, single-mode tapered diamond waveguides containing exactly one high quality NV memory are selected and integrated on tapered silica fibers. Numerical optimization of an adiabatic coupler indicates that near-unity-efficiency photon transfer is possible between the two modes. Experimentally, we find an overall collection efficiency between 16% and 37% and estimate a single photon count rate at saturation above 700 kHz. This integrated system enables robust, alignment-free, and efficient interfacing of single-mode optical fibers with single photon emitters and quantum memories in solids.