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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

Room-temperature single-photon sources: design, performance, and applications

Michael Barth, David Höckel, Lars Koch, Stefan Schietinger, Tim Schröder, Thomas Aichele, Oliver J. Benson

Published Apr 20, 2010• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

Single photon sources are key devices for optical quantum information processing, miniaturized optical elements, as well as light standards. Several systems have been exploited so far such as semiconductor quantum dots, defect centers in diamond, alkali atoms, and parametric down-conversion sources. In this contribution we will review some of these sources and highlight their unique properties with respect to applications in quantum information processing. A focus lies on two different room temperature sources based on cavity-enhanced parametric downconversion and on nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond.

DOI
10.1117/12.849975

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Single photon sources are key devices for optical quantum information processing, miniaturized optical elements, as well as light standards. Several systems have been exploited so far such as semiconductor quantum dots, defect centers in diamond, alkali atoms, and parametric down-conversion sources. In this contribution we will review some of these sources and highlight their unique properties with respect to applications in quantum information processing. A focus lies on two different room temperature sources based on cavity-enhanced parametric downconversion and on nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond.
Quantum light and in particular single photons have become essential resources for a growing number of quantum applications including quantum computing, quantum key distribution and quantum metrology. Solid-state atomlike systems such as semiconductor quantum dots and color defects in crystals have become the hallmark of highly pure single photon emitters in the past two decades. A particular interest has been developed in nanocrystal quantum dots (NQDs) and color centers in diamond as potential compact room-temperature emitters. There are however several challenges that inhibit the use of such sources in current technologies including low photon extraction efficiency, low emission rates and relatively low single photon purities. In this work we will review our efforts in overcoming these technical difficulties using several complementary methods including designing several nanoantenna devices that enhance the directionality and emission rate of the nanoemitter. In addition, we developed several temporal heralding techniques to overcome the hurdle of low single photon purity in NQDs in an effort to produce a highly pure, bright and efficient single photon source on-chip.
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The development of reliable devices to generate single photons is crucial for applications in quantum cryptography, as well as for fundamental quantum optics experiments. Due to their extremely high photostability at room temperature, optically active defects in solids, the so called color centers, are among the most promising candidates. Single NV (nitrogen-vacancy) centers in diamond have been demonstrated to be able to generate single photons and have already shown advantages compared to attenuated laser pulses in a quantum cryptography experiment. The nitrogen-vacancy center (NV center) in diamond consists of a substitutional nitrogen atom and an adjacent vacancy. This complex exhibits an optical transition with a fluorescence lifetime of 11.6 ns. The room temperature spectrum of the NV center consists of the zero-phonon line at 637 nm and broad phononic sidebands with a FWHM of more than 100 nm. Due to the existence of a shelving level the efficiency of the NV center as a single photon source is limited. Additionally, the high diffraction index of bulk diamond restricts the efficiency to collect the fluorescence light.
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.
Single-photon sources (SPS) play a key-role in many applications, spanning from quantum metrology, to quantum information and to the foundations of quantum mechanics. Even if an ideal SPS (i. e. emitting indistinguishable, ”on-demand” single photons, at an arbitrarily fast repetition rate) is far to be realized due to real-world deviations from the ideality, much effort is currently devoted to improving the performance of real sources. With regards to the emission probability, it appears natural to employ sources that are in principle deterministic in the single- photon emission (single quantum emitters such as single atoms, ions, molecules, quantum dots, or color centers in diamond) as opposed to probabilistic ones (usually heralded SPS based on parametric down-conversion). We present an overview of our latest results concerning a work-in-progress NIR pulsed single photon source based on single quantum emitters (color centers in diamond) exploiting recently reported centers. They are particularly interesting because of the narrow emission line (tipically less than 5 nm), the shorter excited state lifetime with respect to NV centres (1 - 2 ns compared to 12 ns, allowing a ten-fold photon emission rate upon saturation) and the polarized emission.
Operation at the single-photon level is beneficial for energy efficiency in optical and optoelectronic devices and opens new prospects for novel applications, ranging from quantum cryptography to quantum computations. In this regard, efficient single-photon sources operating upon electrical injection at room temperature are crucially important. Color centers in diamond are currently considered to be the best candidates capable of room temperature operation. These defects in the lattice structure have been studied intensively during the last two decades, and optically driven single-photon sources have been demonstrated. However, the possibility of operation upon electrical injection was not clear until recently mainly because diamond is a unique material at the interface between solid-state and semiconductor physics. The demonstrated photon emission rate under electrical pumping did not exceed a few tens of kcounts per second [1], which is several orders of magnitude lower than the emission rate of optically pumped centers [2] and is well below the level required for practical applications. Since the mechanism of electroluminescence of the color center in diamond was not known, it was not clear to what extent the single-photon emission rate upon electrical injection could be increased.