From Atomic Defects to Integrated Photonics: A Perspective on Solid-State Quantum Light Sources

TL;DR

This paper reviews the development of solid-state quantum light sources, focusing on various quantum materials and their integration into scalable photonic systems for quantum technologies.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive survey of materials, integration methods, and technological advances in solid-state single-photon emitters for quantum applications.

Findings

Diverse quantum materials enable bright, coherent single-photon emission.

Advances in photonic integration improve on-chip manipulation of quantum emitters.

Key pathways identified for scalable integration into quantum photonic systems.

Abstract

Single-photon emitters (SPEs) constitute a foundational resource for quantum technologies, including secure communication, photonic quantum computing, and emerging quantum network architectures. A wide range of quantum materials, from atom-like point defects in bulk crystals to excitonic states in low-dimensional semiconductors, now provide bright, coherent, and scalable sources of non-classical light. Meanwhile, advances in photonic integration have enabled efficient routing, filtering, and on-chip manipulation of these emitters. From this perspective, we survey and discuss the technological landscape in which solid-state emitters interface with quantum sensing, quantum communication, quantum computation, and emerging photonic AI platforms. Further, we discuss the materials landscape underpinning modern single-photon sources from the zero-dimensional, one-dimensional, two-dimensional and three-dimensional materials. Lastly, we highlight key integration pathways for these single-photon emitters into scalable quantum photonic systems.