The Enigmatic Photon

Russell L. Collins

Shlomo Barak

We dispel the need to attribute a dualistic nature to single photons that arrive, in a double slit experiment, at the screen one at a time. Interference is explained in a novel way based on known and accepted physics. The photon, being an excitation of the electromagnetic field, is regarded as kind of a “particle”, not yet modeled, of a defined size, and not a wave.

Arthur Yu. Neliubov, Ivan Yu. Eremchev, Vladimir P. Drachev +5 more

Microdiamonds with color centers have unique photophysical properties. We discover extremely narrow spectral lines with full width at half maximum down to 0.5 nm (\ensuremath{\approx}390 GHz at wavelength 630.15 nm) at room temperature in photoluminescence of numerous high-pressure--high-temperature microdiamonds. Correlation spectroscopy proves that these lines originate from single photon emitters. Comprehensive experimental characterization of the emitters is performed by means of complementary scanning electron and fluorescence microscopy that allows morphological characterization and in time monitoring of the same labeled emitters. Study of photoluminescence and photoluminescence excitation spectra of single emitters showed negligible phonon sideband and narrowband excitation. Temperature sensitivity, stable photoluminescence, brightness, linear polarization, and fluorescence lifetime \ensuremath{\approx}1.5--2.5 ns are demonstrated. The results show great potential of the discovered ``enigmatic'' emitters for applications in quantum optics, fluorescence labeling, and high-resolution thermometry.