Robust, tunable, and high purity triggered single photon source at room temperature using a nitrogen-vacancy defect in diamond in an open microcavity.

P R Dolan,A A P Trichet,H.-C Chang,Y C Chen,S Castelletto,D Hunger,S Adekanye,L Weng,S Johnson,L C Flatten,J M Smith

doi:10.1364/oe.26.007056

Abstract

We report progress in the development of tunable room temperature triggered single photon sources based on single nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centres in nanodiamond coupled to open access optical micro-cavities. The feeding of fluorescence from an NV centre into the cavity mode increases the spectral density of the emission and results in an output stream of triggered single photons with spectral line width of order 1 nm, tunable in the range 640 - 700 nm. We record single photon purities exceeding 96% and estimated device efficiencies up to 3%. We compare performance using plano-concave microcavities with radii of curvature from 25 μm to 4 μm and show that up to 17% of the total emission is fed into the TEM00 mode. Pulsed Hanbury-Brown Twiss (HBT) interferometry shows that an improvement in single photon purity is facilitated due to the increased spectral density.

Highlights

The realisation of a convenient triggered single photon source (SPS) device that operates at ambient temperature remains an outstanding challenge in the field of photonics
We report progress in the development of tunable room temperature triggered single photon sources based on single nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centres in nanodiamond coupled to open access optical micro-cavities
Whilst tremendous progress has been made in recent years with the engineering of high quality single photon sources based on semiconductor quantum dots operating at cryogenic temperatures, the first commercial devices of this type will inevitably be quite bulky and costly to manufacture, and so devices with the potential to deliver robust, room temperature sources remain of considerable interest

Summary

Introduction

The realisation of a convenient triggered single photon source (SPS) device that operates at ambient temperature remains an outstanding challenge in the field of photonics. Such a device would be an important enabling technology for quantum science and technology in general, with prospects for use in quantum cryptography, metrology and sensing. Since microcavity modes can be engineered to have desirable spatial properties for coupling into external optics and can be tuned spectrally, the emission can be tailored for practical device applications. The relatively broad band emission of the NV centre offers the attraction of a wide spectral tuning range with potential for wavelength division multiplexing of single photon streams

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Results

Conclusion