Controlling light emission by engineering atomic geometries in silicon photonics

Abstract

By engineering atomic geometries composed of nearly 1000 atomic segments embedded in microresonators we observe anomalous photon emission at the telecommunication wavelength. Erbium atoms are geometrically arranged into a lattice inside a silicon nitride microring resonator giving rise to reduced propagation losses. We confirm dependency of light emission to the atomic positions and lattice spacing and observe Fano interference between optical and atomic modes. Our observation may enable design of active silicon materials and novel topology for broad applications in quantum information.Novel phenomena emerge when resonant modes of a hybrid system undergo coherent interactions [1]. The interactions of this kind may result in engineering unconventional materials and platforms for broad applications. In photonics, the coherent and cooperative mode coupling has resulted in observation of peculiar effects including Fano interference [1], cooperative light scattering, [2,3], cavity quantum electrodynamic (cQED) interactions [4,5], Borrmann effect [6], and topological quantum optical effects [7][8][9][10]. Also, controlling the position of laser-cooled atoms near waveguides and fibers has led to the observation of peculiar effects such as coherent backscattering[3]and superradiance [2]. In a different platform, photon-mediated coupling between a small ensemble of microwave oscillators in a superconducting circuit has been observed [11]. In solid photonics, deterministic engineering of cooperative interactions has not been achieved due to the lack of control on atomic positioning and interactions. Towards realization of scalable and long-range interactions between atoms of an ensemble, we study the effect of atomic geometry on collective photon emission in solid photonics. The atoms, in this case, are erbium ions which are rare earth ions with a telecomm-band transition embedded in silicon nitride materials. The approach enables study of a novel regime of light-matter interactions in solids by designing the atomic geometry and mode coupling in the system. The relatively low sensitivity of the rare earth (RE) ions to the solid's environment makes these ions an attractive substance for realization of linear and nonlinear lightmatter interactions for quantum applications [12,13].Here, by activation of silicon nitride structures using precision ion implantation and through a design of atomic geometries, we control the ensemble emission and study collective coupling between optical and atomic modes of the system. We observe emission anomalies when the embedded atomic lattice is commensurate with the wavelength of the emitted light. Moreover, we record asymmetric lineshapes of photon emission governed by Fano interference between emission modes and resonator modes of the system. In this way, we take advantage of the inhomogeneous broadening of ions in silicon nitride and the topology of the modes to reduce optical losses.We use erbium ions implanted as narrow segments in the SiN resonators, which form a periodic lattice. In th...

Long-range cooperative resonances in rare-earth ion arrays inside photonic resonators

“…It can be seen that near the atomic resonant frequencies, i.e., 794.5 nm and 793.5 nm, the lifetime is slightly higher. This can be explained by light re-absorption or radiation trapping 50 also observed in our previous studies 3,46 (For descriptions of error bars in Fig. 4a, b Supplementary Note 7).…”

“…Recent advances in ion implantation enable deterministic engineering of multiple or arrays of ions in the crystalline matrix 1 . In the case of long one-dimensional arrays, the ability to control collective dynamics in such mesoscopic systems can lead to suppression of spontaneous emission and losses in the ensemble 2,3 . The rich physics of many-body interactions in these systems may lead to the discovery of different interaction regimes in solids for nonlinear quantum photonic applications such as on-chip photon-atom entanglement.…”

“…Ion implantation in photonic materials has shown low inhomogeneous and homogeneous broadenings [21][22][23] . We have previously shown that it is possible to arrange REIs into an ordered array inside silicon nitride photonic resonators 3 . Integrating REIs with nonlinear crystals such as LN has also been demonstrated [24][25][26] .…”

Characteristics of 1D ordered arrays of optical centers in solid-state photonics

“…Recently, our group has investigated interactions of photons with 1D arrays of rare-earth ions in solid-state crystals and photonic structures. In one experiment (see figure 1(a)), we used a randomly doped Er crystal to engineer an effective array inside the crystal [11]. We created the array by means of spatio-temporal hole burning to tailor an atomic profile with a periodic spatial distribution in one dimension.…”

Preparing Squeezed Spin States in a Spin–Mechanical Hybrid System with Silicon‐Vacancy Centers

“…As shown in Figure 2e,f, even the inhomogeneity has some harmful effects to the squeezing protocol, we can still observe SSSs as time evolves. To effectively suppress the inhomogeneity in the spin–phonon couplings, one may also use a ring resonator [ 57 ] or a diamond phononic crystal [ 19,24 ] to induce the mechanical phonon modes. In these periodic structures, the SiV center spins can be spaced as an array with an appropriate distance, for example, half of the phonon wavelength.…”