High-efficiency single photon emission from a silicon T-center in a nanobeam

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates highly efficient single photon emission from a silicon T center embedded in a nanobeam, achieving over 70% collection efficiency and enabling coherent emission for quantum technologies.

Contribution

It introduces a nanobeam design that significantly improves photon collection efficiency from silicon T centers, advancing silicon-based quantum photonics.

Findings

Over 70% photon collection efficiency into a single mode fiber.

Successful demonstration of single photon emission from the zero phonon line.

Potential for integrated silicon quantum photonic devices.

Abstract

Color centers in Si could serve as both efficient quantum emitters and quantum memories with long coherence times in an all-silicon platform. Of the various known color centers, the T center holds particular promise because it possesses a spin ground state that has long coherence times. But this color center exhibits a long excited state lifetime which results in a low photon emission rate, requiring methods to extract photon emission with high efficiency. We demonstrate high-efficiency single photon emission from a single T center using a nanobeam. The nanobeam efficiently radiates light in a mode that is well-matched to a lensed fiber, enabling us to collect over 70% of the T center emission directly into a single mode fiber. This efficiency enables us to directly demonstrate single photon emission from the zero phonon line, which represents the coherent emission from the T center. Our results represent an important step towards silicon-integrated spin-photon interfaces for quantum computing and quantum networks.