99% efficiency in collecting photons from a single emitter

TL;DR

This paper presents an improved planar dielectric antenna design that achieves over 99% photon collection efficiency from a single emitter, regardless of dipole orientation, advancing quantum optics and bioimaging applications.

Contribution

The work extends previous antenna designs to attain >99% efficiency for emitters with arbitrary dipole orientations, enabling more versatile single-photon sources and detection methods.

Findings

Achieved >99% photon collection efficiency for arbitrary dipole orientations.

Provided antenna parameters for ultrabright single-photon sources in high-index materials.

Enabled sensitive detection of single molecules in nanofluidic devices.

Abstract

In Nature Photonics 5, 166 (2011), we reported on a planar dielectric antenna that achieved 96% efficiency in collecting the photons emitted by a single molecule. In that work the transition dipole moment of the molecule was set perpendicular to the antenna plane. Here, we present an extension of that scheme that reaches collection efficiencies beyond 99% for emitters with arbitrarily oriented dipole moments. Our work opens important doors in a wide range of contexts including quantum optics, quantum metrology, nano-analytics, and biophysics. In particular, we provide antenna parameters to realize ultrabright single-photon sources in high-index materials such as semiconductor quantum dots and color centers in diamond, as well as sensitive detection of single molecules in nanofluidic devices.