A planar dielectric antenna for directional single-photon emission and near-unity collection efficiency

TL;DR

This paper presents a dielectric planar antenna design that achieves near-unity collection efficiency for single-photon emission at room temperature, significantly improving photon collection in quantum applications.

Contribution

The study introduces a layered dielectric antenna that enhances directional emission and achieves 96% collection efficiency, a substantial advancement over previous methods.

Findings

Achieved 96% collection efficiency with a dielectric antenna.

Recorded detection rates of approximately 50 MHz.

Demonstrated wavelength-insensitive design suitable for various emitters.

Abstract

Single emitters have been considered as sources of single photons in various contexts such as cryptography, quantum computation, spectroscopy, and metrology. The success of these applications will crucially rely on the efficient directional emission of photons into well-defined modes. To accomplish a high efficiency, researchers have investigated microcavities at cryogenic temperatures, photonic nanowires, and near-field coupling to metallic nano-antennas. However, despite an impressive progress, the existing realizations substantially fall short of unity collection efficiency. Here we report on a theoretical and experimental study of a dielectric planar antenna, which uses a layered structure for tailoring the angular emission of a single oriented molecule. We demonstrate a collection efficiency of 96% using a microscope objective at room temperature and obtain record detection rates of about 50 MHz. Our scheme is wavelength-insensitive and can be readily extended to other solid-state emitters such as color centers and semiconductor quantum dots.