Purcell Enhancement of a Single Silicon Carbide Color Center with Coherent Spin Control.

Silicon carbide has recently been developed as a platform for optically addressable spin defects. In particular, the neutral divacancy in the 4H polytype displays an optically addressable spin-1 ground state and near-infrared optical emission. Here, we present the Purcell enhancement of a single neutral divacancy coupled to a photonic crystal cavity. We utilize a combination of nanolithographic techniques and a dopant-selective photoelectrochemical etch to produce suspended cavities with quality factors exceeding 5000. Subsequent coupling to a single divacancy leads to a Purcell factor of ∼50, which manifests as increased photoluminescence into the zero-phonon line and a shortened excited-state lifetime. Additionally, we measure coherent control of the divacancy ground-state spin inside the cavity nanostructure and demonstrate extended coherence through dynamical decoupling. This spin-cavity system represents an advance toward scalable long-distance entanglement protocols using silicon carbide that require the interference of indistinguishable photons from spatially separated single qubits.

Selective Purcell enhancement of two closely linked zero-phonon transitions of a silicon carbide color center.

Point defects in silicon carbide are rapidly becoming a platform of great interest for single-photon generation, quantum sensing, and quantum information science. Photonic crystal cavities (PCCs) can serve as an efficient light-matter interface both to augment the defect emission and to aid in studying the defects' properties. In this work, we fabricate 1D nanobeam PCCs in 4H-silicon carbide with embedded silicon vacancy centers. These cavities are used to achieve Purcell enhancement of two closely spaced defect zero-phonon lines (ZPL). Enhancements of >80-fold are measured using multiple techniques. Additionally, the nature of the cavity coupling to the different ZPLs is examined.

Fabrication of High-Q Nanobeam Photonic Crystals in Epitaxially Grown 4H-SiC.

Silicon carbide (SiC) is an intriguing material due to the presence of spin-active point defects in several polytypes, including 4H-SiC. For many quantum information and sensing applications involving such point defects, it is important to couple their emission to high quality optical cavities. Here we present the fabrication of 1D nanobeam photonic crystal cavities (PCC) in 4H-SiC using a dopant-selective etch to undercut a homoepitaxially grown epilayer of p-type 4H-SiC. These are the first PCCs demonstrated in 4H-SiC and show high quality factors (Q) of up to ∼7000 as well as low modal volumes of <0.5 (λ/n)(3). We take advantage of the high device yield of this fabrication method to characterize hundreds of devices and determine which PCC geometries are optimal. Additionally, we demonstrate two methods to tune the resonant wavelengths of the PCCs over 5 nm without significant degradation of the Q. Lastly, we characterize nanobeam PCCs coupled to luminescence from silicon vacancy point defects (V1, V2) in 4H-SiC. The fundamental modes of two such PCCs are tuned into spectral overlap with the zero phonon line (ZPL) of the V2 center, resulting in an intensity increase of up to 3-fold. These results are important steps on the path to developing 4H-SiC as a platform for quantum information and sensing.