Tailoring Wavelength- and Emitter-Orientation-Dependent Propagation of Single Photons in Silicon Nanowires

Abstract

Designing the propagation of single quanta at subwavelength scale is of major interest for integrated optical quantum information transfer. This study demonstrates the high potential of crystalline silicon wires with nanometric sections as low-loss nanochannels for quantum nanophotonics. Single photons from N-$V$ centers in nanodiamonds can be guided and spectrally filtered over several micrometers while conserving their quantum statistics. Moreover, these nanowaveguides can be designed so that only light from emitters of specific orientations is efficiently guided, enabling quantum state selectivity and modal control of single-photon transfer in subwavelength waveguides.