A Concise Primer on Solid-State Quantum Emitters

TL;DR

This paper reviews solid-state quantum emitters, focusing on quantum dots, defect centres in diamond and silicon carbide, discussing their fundamentals, recent advances, and future prospects in quantum technologies.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of key solid-state quantum emitter platforms, summarizing recent developments and comparing their suitability for quantum applications.

Findings

Quantum dots, diamond, and silicon carbide defect centres are promising platforms.

Recent advances have improved emitter performance and integration.

Future challenges include scalability and material optimization.

Abstract

Quantum emitters serve as essential on-demand photonic resources, generating quantum states of light such as single photons and entangled photon pairs while serving as interfaces between light and matter. Buried in the solid state, quantum emitters enable a straightforward adoption of advanced nanofabrication techniques, facilitating precise engineering of their photonic environment for scalable quantum technologies. In this review, we introduce the fundamentals of quantum emitters and the key metrics characterising their performance. We highlight three material platforms: quantum dots, defect centres in diamond, and defect centres in silicon carbide. We summarise the recent developments of these platforms and discuss their advancements in quantum applications, including quantum communication, computation, and sensing. Finally, we provide a comparison across the three platforms, along with an outlook on future directions and potential challenges.