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SPIE Silicon Photonics

All-silicon quantum light source

Yertay Zhiyenbayev, Wayesh Qarony, Walid Redjem, Vsevolod Ivanov, Christos Papapanos, Wei Liu, Kaushalya Jhuria, Zakaria Al Balushi, Scott D. Dhuey, Adam M. Schwartzberg, Liang Zheng Tan, Thomas Schenkel, Boubacar Kanté

Published Mar 12, 2024• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

Integrating quantum optics with silicon would substantially benefit from the extensive advancements made in manufacturing classical electronic and optical components. We present the first all-silicon quantum light source by embedding a single silicon-based defect within a silicon nanophotonic cavity. We have observed a 30-fold enhancement of luminescence, achieving near-unity atom-cavity coupling efficiency and an 8-fold acceleration of emission from the all-silicon quantum emissive center. These findings pave the way for large-scale integrated cavity quantum electrodynamics and quantum light-matter interfaces.

DOI
10.1117/12.3002071

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Integrating quantum optics with silicon would substantially benefit from the extensive advancements made in manufacturing classical electronic and optical components. We present the first all-silicon quantum light source by embedding a single silicon-based defect within a silicon nanophotonic cavity. We have observed a 30-fold enhancement of luminescence, achieving near-unity atom-cavity coupling efficiency and an 8-fold acceleration of emission from the all-silicon quantum emissive center. These findings pave the way for large-scale integrated cavity quantum electrodynamics and quantum light-matter interfaces.
Silicon is the most scalable optoelectronic material but has suffered from its inability to generate directly and efficiently classical or quantum light on-chip. Scaling and integration are the most fundamental challenges facing quantum science and technology. We report an all-silicon quantum light source based on a single atomic emissive center embedded in a silicon-based nanophotonic cavity. We observe a more than 30-fold enhancement of luminescence, a near-unity atom-cavity coupling efficiency, and an 8-fold acceleration of the emission from the all-silicon quantum emissive center. Our work opens immediate avenues for large-scale integrated cavity quantum electrodynamics and quantum light-matter interfaces with applications in quantum communication and networking, sensing, imaging, and computing.
Photons are excellent carriers of quantum information. The generation, manipulation and read-out of photonic quantum states have enabled pioneering investigations in quantum physics, paving the way to groundbreaking technologies. Integrated quantum photonics, that is the processing of photons on-chip, is at the forefront of this revolution. In particular, silicon integrated circuits have emerged as the dominant material platform for large-scale quantum photonics. However, the difficulty to inject single photons on-demand in a silicon chip is a major obstacle to the level of complexity of current systems. In this context, the isolation of individual fluorescent defects in silicon, called color centers, opens an avenue toward the integration of atomic sources of single photons. While several color centers have demonstrated an ability to generate antibunched photons, practical applications require tailoring of their emission through quantum electrodynamics effects in optical cavities.This PhD thesis is devoted to cavity quantum electrodynamics with color centers in silicon optical cavities, in view of building an efficient source of single photons. The efforts are first focused on ensembles of G centers in microring cavities. The optical properties of cavity-coupled G centers are studied using microphotoluminescence spectroscopy, and an enhancement of their zero-phonon emission rate by Purcell effect is demonstrated. However, a quantitative analysis reveals a poor quantum efficiency, motivating the choice of another emitter for further experiments. Subsequently, the efforts are focused on the W center. Purcell enhancement of the overall recombination rate is observed for an ensemble of W centers in a circular Bragg grating cavity. Using a quantitative analysis based on finite-difference time-domain calculation, a high quantum efficiency is estimated. The results being encouraging for the purpose of single photon emission, an optical setup is developed for single-emitter spectroscopy and a strategy is devised to fabricate individually-adressable emitters, leading to the isolation of single W centers in unpatterned silicon-on-insulator. Using a nanofabrication process allowing for deterministic positionning, the emitters are embedded into circular Bragg grating cavities, resulting in an increase of the photoluminescence intensity by orders of magnitude by Purcell effect. This work leads to the demonstration of a source of triggered single photons.A next milestone will be the demonstration of a single photon source for integrated photonic circuits, based on a color center in a waveguide-coupled optical cavity. Beyond the interest for integrated quantum photonics, the observation of bright photoluminescence from single color centers opens perspectives for further experiments, allowing to probe fundamental questions relative to their photophysics.
Silicon G centers show significant promise as single photon sources in a scalable silicon platform. But these color centers have large nonradiative decay and a low Debye-Waller factor, limiting their usability in quantum applications. In this work, we demonstrate bright Purcell-enhanced emission from a silicon G center by coupling it to a nanophotonic cavity. The nanobeam cavity enhances the spontaneous emission rate of a single G center by a factor of 6, corresponding to a Purcell factor greater than 31 when accounting for decay into the phonon sideband. We obtain a spontaneous emission rate of 0.97 ns, which is the fastest single photon emission rate reported in silicon. With this radiative enhancement, we achieve an order of magnitude improvement in emitter brightness compared to previously reported values. These results pave the way for scalable quantum light sources on a silicon photonic chip.
Monolithic integration of single-photon sources into silicon photonics offers a compelling solution for realizing scalable quantum telecommunication architectures. Among the candidate silicon color centers, the C-center features a zero-phonon emission in the telecom L-band, corresponding to the spectral window of minimum transmission loss in optical fibers. Despite this advantage, isolating single C-centers has remained an unrealized challenge in solid-state quantum optics. In this work, we report the isolation of a single silicon C-center. We enhance the spontaneous emission rate of the zero-phonon line by coupling the single emitter to a nanophotonic crystal cavity, observing a fivefold reduction in the excited-state lifetime compared to bulk conditions, which corresponds to a Purcell factor lower bound of 33. Second-order autocorrelation measurements confirm single-photon emission from the investigated defect, obtaining an optical purity of g(2)(0)=0.23g^{(2)}(0) = 0.23g(2)(0)=0.23 without background correction. Our results establish a native telecom L-band quantum light source in silicon, laying the foundation for ultra-low-loss and long-distance quantum applications.