A photonic platform hosting telecom photon emitters in silicon

Abstract

Silicon, a ubiquitous material in modern computing, is an emerging platform for realizing a source of indistinguishable single-photons on demand. The integration of recently discovered single-photon emitters in silicon into photonic structures, is advantageous to exploit their full potential for integrated photonic quantum technologies. Here, we show the integration of telecom photon emitters in a photonic platform consisting of silicon nanopillars. We developed a CMOS-compatible nanofabrication method, enabling the production of thousands of individual nanopillars per square millimeter with state-of-the-art photonic-circuit pitch, all the while being free of fabrication-related radiation damage defects. We found a waveguiding effect of the 1278 nm-G center emission along individual pillars accompanied by improved brightness, photoluminescence signal-to-noise ratio and photon extraction efficiency compared to that of bulk silicon. These results unlock clear pathways to monolithically integrating single-photon emitters into a photonic platform at a scale that matches the required pitch of quantum photonic circuits.

Wafer-scale nanofabrication of telecom single-photon emitters in silicon

“…Our results enable the direct realization of quantum PICs with monolithically integrated singlephoton sources with electrical control [11]. These findings also provide a route for the quasi-deterministic creation of single G and W centers at desired locations of photonic structures [35], tunable cavities [36] and SOI waveguides [37]. Furthermore, our approach can potentially be applied for the controllable creation of other color centers in silicon, including T centers with optically-interfaced spins [38].…”

Silicon photonic devices for scalable quantum information applications

“…Colour centers, known as G centers and T centers, which originate from carbon-related defect in silicon, are becoming another kind of candidates with telecom-O band radiation [61][62][63][64]. Different from other methods, colour cen-ters can be directly integrated into silicon waveguides without hybrid integration for large-scale quantum photonic information applications [65,66]. For example, tens of thousands of individually addressed photon-spin qubits have been demonstrated with T centers, which will provide photonic links between spin qubits and greatly advance quantum information networks [64].…”