Open AccessRobust, tunable, and high purity triggered single photon source at room temperature using a nitrogen-vacancy defect in diamond in an open microcavity
Author(s) -
Philip R. Dolan,
Sanmi Adekanye,
A. A. P. Trichet,
Sam Johnson,
Lucas C. Flatten,
Y. C. Chen,
Laiyi Weng,
David Hunger,
HuanCheng Chang,
Stefania Castelletto,
Jason M. Smith
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.394
H-Index - 271
ISSN - 1094-4087
DOI - 10.1364/oe.26.007056
Subject(s) - photon , diamond , optics , single photon source , materials science , photon counting , nanodiamond , optoelectronics , interferometry , vacancy defect , quantum optics , physics , nuclear magnetic resonance , composite material
We report progress in the development of tunable room temperature triggered single photon sources based on single nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centres in nanodiamond coupled to open access optical micro-cavities. The feeding of fluorescence from an NV centre into the cavity mode increases the spectral density of the emission and results in an output stream of triggered single photons with spectral line width of order 1 nm, tunable in the range 640 - 700 nm. We record single photon purities exceeding 96% and estimated device efficiencies up to 3%. We compare performance using plano-concave microcavities with radii of curvature from 25 μm to 4 μm and show that up to 17% of the total emission is fed into the TEM 00 mode. Pulsed Hanbury-Brown Twiss (HBT) interferometry shows that an improvement in single photon purity is facilitated due to the increased spectral density.