Spectrally reconfigurable quantum emitters enabled by optimized fast modulation

Abstract

The ability to shape photon emission facilitates strong photon-mediated interactions between disparate physical systems, thereby enabling applications in quantum information processing, simulation and communication. Spectral control in solid state platforms such as color centers, rare earth ions, and quantum dots is particularly attractive for realizing such applications on-chip. Here we propose the use of frequency-modulated optical transitions for spectral engineering of single photon emission. Using a scattering-matrix formalism, we find that a two-level system, when modulated faster than its optical lifetime, can be treated as a single-photon source with a widely reconfigurable photon spectrum that is amenable to standard numerical optimization techniques. To enable the experimental demonstration of this spectral control scheme, we investigate the Stark tuning properties of the silicon vacancy in silicon carbide, a color center with promise for optical quantum information processing technologies. We find that the silicon vacancy possesses excellent spectral stability and tuning characteristics, allowing us to probe its fast modulation regime, observe the theoretically-predicted two-photon correlations, and demonstrate spectral engineering. Our results suggest that frequency modulation is a powerful technique for the generation of new light states with unprecedented control over the spectral and temporal properties of single photons.

Resolving Jahn-Teller induced vibronic fine structure of silicon vacancy quantum emission in silicon carbide

“…Controlled and reliable formation of Si vacancies has been studied based on, e.g., proton beam writing [19], focused ion implantation to form scalable defect arrays [20,21], and femtosecond laser writing [22]. Electric fields offer promising means of manipulating and controlling SPEs, as demonstrated by recent studies on spectral tuning of the V Si [23][24][25] and divacancy (V Si V C ) [26][27][28] via the Stark effect [29]. Notably, it was recently proposed [12] and shown [30] that also the local inhomogeneties modifying emission energies can be exploited, by embedding V Si defects in SiC micro-and nanoparticles of predominantly the 6H polytype.…”

Photon control and coherent interactions via lattice dark states in atomic arrays

“…Additional control of the frequency profile can be achieved by adding a periodic time-dependent detuning [54,55] that is equal at all lattice sites. In Appendix D, we show that it results in modulation-shifted sidebands and that the photon is emitted in a coherent superposition of many frequencies.…”

Arbitrary linear transformations for photons in the frequency synthetic dimension

“…Previous works have considered implementing photonic linear transformations using different frequency channels in parallel but without frequency conversions among them 6 , 7 , 9 , 11 by demultiplexing the different frequencies into separate spatial channels. Additionally, optimized fast modulation has been used for tailoring single photon spectra from two-level quantum emitters 35 , or for quantum frequency conversion 15 and linear optical quantum computation 17 , 36 , where the modulator is used as a generalized beam splitter in synthetic frequency dimensions. However, the design of an entire scattering matrix that implements an arbitrary N × N linear transformation in synthetic space, which is essential for many applications in quantum information processing and neural networks, has not yet been shown.…”