Wide-range electrical tunability of single-photon emission from chromium-based colour centres in diamond

Abstract

We demonstrate electrical control of the single photon emission spectrum from chromium-based colour centres implanted in monolithic diamond. Under an external electric field the tunability range is typically three orders of magnitude larger than the radiative linewidth and at least one order of magnitude larger than the observed linewidth. The electric and magnetic field dependence of luminescence gives indications on the inherent symmetry and we propose Cr-X or X-Cr-Y type noncentrosymmetric atomic configurations as most probable candidates for these centres.Room temperature operation of diamond-based colour centres offers a unique platform to the field of quantum photonics [1] . The nitrogen-vacancy (NV) colour centre in diamond has received interest in diverse research fields ranging from spin-based quantum information [2][3][4][5] to nanoscale magnetometry [6][7][8][9] within the last decade. The impressive level of spin coherence [5] , the fast microwave spin manipulation [10] , and the recently demonstrated spin-photon interface [11] are essential to the proposed applications. However, the NV centre's broad photon spectrum is unfavourable for many of these experiments. Although emission from the zero-phonon line (ZPL) has been shown to be radiative lifetime broadened, it only accounts for about 4% of the total spectrum, owing to the dominance of phonon-assisted decay. This motivated the search for alternative centres, where potentially a similar degree of spin control could coexist with superior photonic properties. Consequently, silicon-vacancy (Si-V) [12,13] and nickel-based centres, such as NE8 [14] , were studied in the last few years for this purpose. Recently, chromium-based colour centres were reported among the brightest singlephoton emitters in the near infrared spectrum [15,16] . Here, we show that these centres have an impressive level of spectral tunability on the order of a few meVs, while

Diamond Nanophotonics

“…Chromium related color centers have been reported with a narrow emission (< 11 nm) at wavelengths between 740 and 790 nm [76][77][78][79][80][81] . The first observation of these centers used nanodiamonds grown in the presence of chromium-containing sapphire substrates [82] .…”

Very bright, near-infrared single photon emitters in diamond

“…This is similar to the distribution of emitters obtained by extensive Cr and Cr-O ion implantation experiments. 29 Figure 3(b) shows the linewidths of the same emitters shown in Figure 3(a) with no clear correlations between the emission wavelength of the emitters and the linewidths. However, a majority of the emitters have very narrow linewidths between 1.38 nm and 2.13 nm, comparable to other narrow emitters found in diamond such as the NE8.…”

An alternative electric-field spectrum for laser-driven atomic systems

“…Such emission rates would be visible in actual experiments [2,3]. Thus, if we assume on physical grounds that an un-driven atom should not emit photons from its stationary state, then we must conclude that the photonabsorbing environment resets the field onto the vacuum state associated with the so-called rotating-wave Hamiltonian, which contains no counter-rotating terms [10].…”

“…Recent years have seen a wide range of high-precision experiments, which study the light-matter interactions of trapped ions [1], single quantum dots [2], colour centres [3], and molecules on surfaces [4]. What all of these systems have in common is that an external laser excites a strongly-confined ground state electron into an excited state, which results in the spontaneous emission of photons.…”