Towards a picosecond transform-limited nitrogen-vacancy based single photon source

TL;DR

This paper investigates a nitrogen-vacancy center coupled with an optical cavity to produce a near-perfect, transform-limited single photon source with picosecond timing precision, high efficiency, and minimal multi-photon events.

Contribution

It presents an analysis of optimizing NV^- center based single photon sources using cavity Purcell enhancement and sub-picosecond excitation, achieving near-ideal emission properties.

Findings

Effective lifetime of 70 ps

Linewidth of 0.01 nm

Near unit single photon emission probability

Abstract

We analyze a nitrogen-vacancy (NV^-) colour centre based single photon source based on cavity Purcell enhancement of the zero phonon line and suppression of other transitions. Optimal performance conditions of the cavity-centre system are analyzed using Master equation and quantum trajectory methods. By coupling the centre strongly to a high-finesse optical cavity [Q ~ O(10^4-10^5), V ~ lambda^3] and using sub-picosecond optical excitation the system has striking performance, including effective lifetime of 70 ps, linewidth of 0.01 nm, near unit single photon emission probability and small [O(10^-5)] multi-photon probability.