Strongly Cavity-Enhanced Spontaneous Emission from Silicon-Vacancy Centers in Diamond

• Published in: Nano letters 2018-02, Vol.18 (2), p.1360-1365
• Main Authors: Zhang, Jingyuan Linda, Sun, Shuo, Burek, Michael J, Dory, Constantin, Tzeng, Yan-Kai, Fischer, Kevin A, Kelaita, Yousif, Lagoudakis, Konstantinos G, Radulaski, Marina, Shen, Zhi-Xun, Melosh, Nicholas A, Chu, Steven, Lončar, Marko, Vučković, Jelena
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: color center; defect-center materials; diamond; MATERIALS SCIENCE; nanophotonics; Purcell enhancement; silicon-vacancy center; single-photon generation
• ISSN: 1530-6984; 1530-6992
• DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.7b05075

Quantum emitters are an integral component for a broad range of quantum technologies, including quantum communication, quantum repeaters, and linear optical quantum computation. Solid-state color centers are promising candidates for scalable quantum optics due to their long coherence time and small inhomogeneous broadening. However, once excited, color centers often decay through phonon-assisted processes, limiting the efficiency of single-photon generation and photon-mediated entanglement generation. Herein, we demonstrate strong enhancement of spontaneous emission rate of a single silicon-vacancy center in diamond embedded within a monolithic optical cavity, reaching a regime in which the excited-state lifetime is dominated by spontaneous emission into the cavity mode. We observe 10-fold lifetime reduction and 42-fold enhancement in emission intensity when the cavity is tuned into resonance with the optical transition of a single silicon-vacancy center, corresponding to 90% of the excited-state energy decay occurring through spontaneous emission into the cavity mode. We also demonstrate the largest coupling strength (g/2π = 4.9 ± 0.3 GHz) and cooperativity (C = 1.4) to date for color-center-based cavity quantum electrodynamics systems, bringing the system closer to the strong coupling regime.