Diamond sparkles with one photon

Pasternak D.G., Romshin A.M., Khmelnitsky R.A. +2 more

Senkalla, Katharina

From jewelry stores to quantum labs — diamonds have found a new sparkle in the world of quantum technologies. Their atomic-scale color centers host electron and nuclear spins that can serve as long-lived qubits and bright photon sources, making them powerful candidates for realizing quantum networks. In this talk, I’ll explore how these tiny defects in diamond enable us to connect stationary quantum memories through flying photonic qubits. We’ll look at the fundamental principles, key experimental advances, and ongoing challenges in creating scalable quantum links — and discuss how “shining light on defects” may become the key to the quantum internet.

Brian Patton, Jeremy L. O’Brien

Shen Li, Cuihong Li, Bo-Wen Zhao +5 more

Single-photon flux is one of the crucial properties of nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers in diamond for its application in quantum information techniques. Here we fabricate diamond conical nanowires to enhance the single-photon count rate. Through the interaction between tightly confined optical mode in nanowires and NV centers, the single-photon lifetime is much shortened and the collection efficiency is enhanced. As a result, the detected single-photon rate can be at 564 kcps, and the total detection coefficient can be 0.8%, which is much higher than that in bulk diamond. Such a nanowire single-photon device with high photon flux can be applied to improve the fidelity of quantum computation and the precision of quantum sensors.

J. R. Rabeau, Jelezko, Stacey +6 more