Suppressing Spectral Diffusion of the Emitted Photons with Optical Pulses

TL;DR

This paper presents a method using optical pulses to suppress spectral diffusion in solid-state emitters, significantly improving photon emission stability for quantum communication.

Contribution

The authors introduce a pulse sequence technique that stabilizes emission frequency in solid-state qubits, enhancing photon-mediated quantum protocols.

Findings

Few nanosecond pulses can effectively suppress spectral diffusion.

Method is analytically demonstrated and numerically validated.

Applicable to nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond.

Abstract

In many quantum architectures the solid-state qubits, such as quantum dots or color centers, are interfaced via emitted photons. However, the frequency of photons emitted by solid-state systems exhibits slow uncontrollable fluctuations over time (spectral diffusion), creating a serious problem for implementation of the photon-mediated protocols. Here we show that a sequence of optical pulses applied to the solid-state emitter can stabilize the emission line at the desired frequency. We demonstrate efficiency, robustness, and feasibility of the method analytically and numerically. Taking nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond as an example, we show that only several pulses, with the width of 1 ns, separated by few ns (which is not difficult to achieve) can suppress spectral diffusion. Our method provides a simple and robust way to greatly improve the efficiency of photon-mediated entanglement and/or coupling to photonic cavities for solid-state qubits.