Imaging a Nitrogen-Vacancy Center with a Diamond Immersion Metalens

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a dielectric metalens integrated with diamond to efficiently image and collect photons from a nitrogen-vacancy center, enhancing quantum emitter detection for quantum technologies.

Contribution

It introduces a scalable, high-NA dielectric metalens directly etched into diamond for efficient, diffraction-limited imaging of quantum emitters without traditional objectives.

Findings

Achieved imaging of a single NV center with a metalens

Demonstrated high transmission efficiency (>90%)

Enabled scalable photon collection for quantum applications

Abstract

Solid-state quantum emitters have emerged as robust single-photon sources and addressable spins: key components in rapidly developing quantum technologies for broadband magnetometry, biological sensing, and quantum information science. Performance in these applications, be it magnetometer sensitivity or quantum key generation rate, is limited by the number of photons detected. However, efficient collection of a quantum emitter's photoluminescence (PL) is challenging as its atomic scale necessitates diffraction-limited imaging with nanometer-precision alignment, oftentimes at cryogenic temperatures. In this letter, we image an individual quantum emitter, an isolated nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond, using a dielectric metalens composed of subwavelength pillars etched into the diamond's surface. The metalens eliminates the need for an objective by operating as a high-transmission-efficiency immersion lens with a numerical aperture (NA) greater than 1.0. This design provides a scalable approach for fiber coupling solid-state quantum emitters that will enable the development of deployable quantum devices.