Dielectric Fano Nanoantennas for Enabling Sub-Nanosecond Lifetimes in NV-based Single Photon Emitters

TL;DR

This paper presents a dielectric Fano nanoantenna design that significantly enhances the emission rate of NV-center-based single photon emitters, achieving sub-nanosecond lifetimes and high polarization contrast for quantum photonics.

Contribution

The authors designed and fabricated a dielectric Fano resonator supporting hybridized modes, demonstrating a tenfold Purcell enhancement for NV centers in nanodiamonds.

Findings

Achieved Purcell factor of ~10 for NV centers

Sub-nanosecond emission lifetime demonstrated

High polarization contrast of 9 obtained

Abstract

Solid-state quantum emitters are essential sources of single photons, and enhancing their emission rates is of paramount importance for applications in quantum communications, computing, and metrology. One approach is to couple quantum emitters with resonant photonic nanostructures, where the emission rate is enhanced due to the Purcell effect. Dielectric nanoantennas are promising as they provide strong emission enhancement compared to plasmonic ones, which suffer from high Ohmic loss. Here, we designed and fabricated a dielectric Fano resonator based on a pair of silicon (Si) ellipses and a disk, which supports the mode hybridization between quasi-bound-states-in-the-continuum (quasi-BIC) and Mie resonance. We demonstrated the performance of the developed resonant system by interfacing it with single photon emitters (SPEs) based on nitrogen-vacancy (NV-) centers in nanodiamonds (NDs). We observed that the interfaced emitters have a Purcell enhancement factor of ~10, with sub-ns emission lifetime and a polarization contrast of 9. Our results indicate a promising method for developing efficient and compact single-photon sources for integrated quantum photonics applications.