Super-Poissonian Light Statistics from Individual Silicon Vacancy Centers Coupled to a Laser-Written Diamond Waveguide

Abstract

Modifying light fields at the single-photon level is a key challenge for upcoming quantum technologies and can be realized in a scalable manner through integrated quantum photonics. Laser-written diamond photonics offers 3D fabrication capabilities and large mode-field diameters matched to fiber optic technology, though limiting the cooperativity at the single-emitter level. To realize large coupling efficiencies, we combine excitation of single shallow-implanted silicon vacancy centers via high numerical aperture optics with detection assisted by laser-written type-II waveguides. We demonstrate single-emitter extinction measurements with a cooperativity of 0.0050 and a relative beta factor of 13%. The transmission of resonant photons reveals single-photon subtraction from a quasi-coherent field resulting in super-Poissonian light statistics. Our architecture enables light field engineering in an integrated design on the single quantum level although the intrinsic cooperativity is low. Laser-written structures can be fabricated in three dimensions and with a natural connectivity to optical fiber arrays.

Solid-State Color Centers for Single-Photon Generation

“…This feature has enabled the demonstration of individual photon emitters coupled to wave- With respect to the doping of a diamond substrate with the desired atomic species during the chemical-vapor deposition or high-pressure-high-temperature synthesis of the material [56][57][58], ion implantation, possibly combined with high-power laser processing [59,60] has the advantage of delivering a controlled number of impurities at specific locations in the target crystal, with spatial accuracies below 100 nm (Figure 2b) [54,61]. This feature has enabled the demonstration of individual photon emitters coupled to waveguides and optical fibers [61][62][63][64], photonic crystals [65][66][67][68], and hybrid photonic circuits (Figure 2c) [55]. Conversely, the emission wavelength of the color centers explored so far in the scientific literature lie mostly in the visible range.…”