Tapered fiber coupling of single photons emitted by a deterministically positioned single nitrogen vacancy center

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates efficient coupling of photons emitted by a single nitrogen vacancy center in diamond to a tapered optical fiber, advancing integration of single photon sources into quantum networks.

Contribution

It introduces a deterministic nano-manipulation technique for positioning NV centers onto tapered fibers and experimentally measures their photon coupling efficiency.

Findings

Coupling efficiency bounds of approximately 9.5% to 10.4%.

Successful evanescent coupling of single photons to a tapered fiber.

Potential for integrating single photon sources into quantum networks.

Abstract

A diamond nano-crystal hosting a single nitrogen vacancy (NV) center is optically selected with a confocal scanning microscope and positioned deterministically onto the subwavelength-diameter waist of a tapered optical fiber (TOF) with the help of an atomic force microscope. Based on this nano-manipulation technique we experimentally demonstrate the evanescent coupling of single fluorescence photons emitted by a single NV-center to the guided mode of the TOF. By comparing photon count rates of the fiber-guided and the free-space modes and with the help of numerical FDTD simulations we determine a lower and upper bound for the coupling efficiency of (9.5+/-0.6)% and (10.4+/-0.7)%, respectively. Our results are a promising starting point for future integration of single photon sources into photonic quantum networks and applications in quantum information science.