Resonant structure for improved directionality and extraction of single photons

TL;DR

This paper presents a dielectric metasurface design that significantly enhances the directionality and collection efficiency of single photons emitted by defect centers in diamond, with potential applications across various quantum emitters.

Contribution

The authors designed a dielectric metasurface exploiting Mie-resonance and the Kerker condition to improve photon extraction and directionality for NV centers in diamond, achieving up to 500x collection enhancement.

Findings

Up to 500x increase in photon collection efficiency.

Highly directional emission in a 20-degree forward lobe.

Design stability against emitter position variations.

Abstract

Fluorescent atomic defects, especially in dielectric materials, such as diamond are quite promising for several emerging quantum applications. However, efficient light extraction, directional emission, and narrow spectral emission are key challenges. We have designed dielectric metasurface exploiting Mie-resonance and the Kerker condition to address these issues. Our designed diamond metasurface, tailored for nitrogen-vacancy (NV) defect centers in diamond, predicts up to 500x improvement in the collection of 637 nm (zero phonon line) photons over that from the bare diamond. Our design achieves highly directional emission, predominantly emitting in a 20 degree lobe in the forward direction. This makes light collection more efficient, including for fiber-based collection. The predicted results are stable against the position of the emitter placed in the metaelement, thus alleviating the challenging fabrication requirement of precise positioning of the defect center. Equally importantly, our design approach can be applied to enhance single photon emission also from other defects such as SiV, other materials such as hBN, and other sources such as quantum dots.