Single photon emission from silicon-vacancy colour centres in chemical vapour deposition nano-diamonds on iridium

Abstract

We introduce a process for the fabrication of high quality, spatially isolated nano-diamonds on iridium via microwave plasma assisted CVD-growth. We perform spectroscopy of single silicon-vacancy (SiV)-centres produced during the growth of the nano-diamonds. The colour centres exhibit extraordinary narrow zero-phonon-lines down to 0.7 nm at room temperature. Single photon count rates up to 4.8 Mcps at saturation make these SiV-centres the brightest diamond based single photon sources to date. We measure for the first time the fine structure of a single SiV-centre thus confirming the atomic composition of the investigated colour centres.

One- and two-dimensional photonic crystal microcavities in single crystal diamond

“…A more detailed analysis (see supplementary information) has to take into account spatial and oriental averaging of the emitter-mode overlap; spectral mismatch of SiV ZPL width and cavity linewidth; modification of the local density of states by the photonic crystal and different collection efficiencies for cavity mode and un-coupled emission. Furthermore, one has to account for the branching ratio of SiV emission into ZPL, phonon sidebands and non-radiative decay channels, which is approximately 4%:1%:95% [9]. This analysis predicts an enhancement of the ZPL intensity of 3 ± 1, which is in good agreement with the experimental measurements.…”

“…NV − and SiV centres with applications as quantum bit and as bright single photon emitters, respectively. SiV centres are incorporated in the diamond film during the growth process [9], whereas NV − centres are not observed in the sample. However, there exist techniques to deterministically implant NV centres after the patterning process at well defined positions in the PhC cavities [38].…”

“…Such transfer of quantum information between spins and photons in solid state systems [4] can be strongly enhanced by optical microcavities with small mode volume V mod and large quality factor Q. Micro-cavities can further be employed for enhancing the emission rate of single photon emitters [5,6] based e.g. on NV − centres [7] or bright Cr-related complexes [8] and silicon-vacancy (SiV) centres [9], for cavity enhanced spin measurements [10] and quantum communication [11]. For all these schemes it is important to selectively enhance the zero phonon line (ZPL) emission and suppress emission into phonon side-bands and non-radiative decay channels.…”

Engineering near-infrared single-photon emitters with optically active spins in ultrapure silicon carbide

“…3d). A possible explanation is that a deshelving process of the metastable state |3i may occur under optical excitation 32 .…”

“…In order to find the transition rates k ij of the four-level model in Fig. 3a, we follow closely the approach applied to describe the photophysics of the silicon-vacancy colour centre in diamond 32 …”