Chromium single photon emitters in diamond fabricated by ion implantation

TL;DR

This paper reports the controlled creation of bright chromium single photon emitters in diamond using ion implantation, with detailed characterization of their optical properties and a proposed model of their atomic structure.

Contribution

It introduces a method to engineer chromium single photon sources in diamond and provides a detailed optical and structural characterization of these emitters.

Findings

Cr centers emit polarized light at 749 nm with a 4 nm linewidth

The emitters have an extremely short lifetime of ~1 ns

Count rate of 500,000 counts per second

Abstract

Controlled fabrication and identification of bright single photon emitters is at the heart of quantum optics and materials science. Here we demonstrate a controlled engineering of a chromium bright single photon source in bulk diamond by ion implantation. The Cr center has fully polarized emission with a ZPL centered at 749 nm, FWHM of 4 nm, an extremely short lifetime of ~1 ns, and a count rate of 500 kcounts/s. By combining the polarization measurements and the vibronic spectra, a model of the center has been proposed consisting of one interstitial chromium atom with a transition dipole along one of the <100> directions.