Excitation of nanowire surface plasmons by silicon vacancy centers in nanodiamonds

Shailesh Kumar,Sergey I Bozhevolnyi,Viatcheslav N Agafonov,Valery A Davydov

doi:10.1364/ome.7.002586

Abstract

Silicon vacancy (SiV) centers in diamonds have emerged as a very promising candidate for quantum emitters due to their narrow emission line resulting in their indistinguishability. While many different quantum emitters have already been used for the excitation of various propagating plasmonic modes, the corresponding exploitation of SiV centers has emained so far uncharted territory. Here, we report on the excitation of surface plasmon modes supported by silver nanowires using SiV centers in nanodiamonds. The coupling of SiV center fluorescence to surface plasmons is observed, when a nanodiamond situated close to a nanowire is illuminated by the pump, as radiated emission from the distal nanowire end. The effect of coupling is also seen as a change in the SiV center lifetime. Finally, we discuss possible avenues for strengthening the SiV center coupling to surface plasmon modes.

Highlights

Quantum emitter coupled to waveguides can be useful for devising an efficient source of single photons, entanglement of quantum emitters and eventually for quantum communication and quantum computing [1,2,3]
Even though we have not observed coupling of single Silicon vacancy (SiV) centers, it can still be useful for the observation of nonlinearity at single photon level as well as entanglement of two SiV centers coupled to a plasmonic waveguide, as has been observed for five SiV centers coupled to a diamond nanophotonic waveguide
Almost lifetime limited linewidths for optical transitions have been observed at low temperature for SiV centers in nanodiamonds, which were fabricated the same way as the nanodiamonds used in our experiments [16]

Summary

Introduction

Quantum emitter coupled to waveguides can be useful for devising an efficient source of single photons, entanglement of quantum emitters and eventually for quantum communication and quantum computing [1,2,3]. It has been shown that differerent SiV centers emit indistinguishable photons [14, 17] These properties have recently been utilized in a nonlinear device operating at single photon level as well as the entanglement of two SiV centers [18]. The coupled system is proposed as a platform where nonlinear effects at single photon level can be studied and quantum emitters can be entangled [19, 20]. This will enable formation of a quantum network, and will eventually allow for quantum computation. The coupled system is further characterized by the measurement of spectrum and lifetime at the distal end

Experiment and results

Numerical simulation and discussion

Conclusion

Spectra obtained for SiV centers in nanodiamonds

Another silver nanowire-SiV centers in a nanodiamond system