Photonic-Cavity-Enhanced Laser Writing of Color Centers in Diamond.

Color centers in diamond have widespread utility in quantum technologies, but their creation process remains stochastic in nature. Deterministic creation of color centers in device-ready diamond platforms can improve the yield, scalability, and integration. Recent work using pulsed laser excitation has shown impressive progress in deterministically creating defects in bulk diamond. Here, we extend this laser-writing process into nanophotonic devices etched into diamond membranes, including nanopillars and photonic resonators with writing and subsequent readout occurring in situ at cryogenic temperatures. We demonstrate the optically driven creation of carbon vacancy (GR1) and nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers in diamond nanopillars and observe enhanced photoluminescence collection from them. We also fabricate bullseye resonators and leverage their cavity modes to locally amplify the laser-writing field, yielding defect creation with picojoule write-pulse energies 100 times lower than those typically used in bulk diamond demonstrations.

Enhanced cavity coupling to silicon vacancies in 4H silicon carbide using laser irradiation and thermal annealing.

The negatively charged silicon monovacancy [Formula: see text] in 4H silicon carbide (SiC) is a spin-active point defect that has the potential to act as a qubit in solid-state quantum information applications. Photonic crystal cavities (PCCs) can augment the optical emission of the [Formula: see text], yet fine-tuning the defect-cavity interaction remains challenging. We report on two postfabrication processes that result in enhancement of the [Formula: see text] optical emission from our PCCs, an indication of improved coupling between the cavity and ensemble of silicon vacancies. Below-bandgap irradiation at 785-nm and 532-nm wavelengths carried out at times ranging from a few minutes to several hours results in stable enhancement of emission, believed to result from changing the relative ratio of [Formula: see text] ("dark state") to [Formula: see text] ("bright state"). The much faster change effected by 532-nm irradiation may result from cooperative charge-state conversion due to proximal defects. Thermal annealing at 100 °C, carried out over 20 min, also results in emission enhancements and may be explained by the relatively low-activation energy diffusion of carbon interstitials [Formula: see text], subsequently recombining with other defects to create additional [Formula: see text]s. These PCC-enabled experiments reveal insights into defect modifications and interactions within a controlled, designated volume and indicate pathways to improved defect-cavity interactions.

Tailoring cavity coupled plasmonic substrates for SERS applications.

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) has been effectively used in biosensing applications due to its high sensitivity and specificity. Enhancing the coupling of light into plasmonic nanostructures can lead to engineered SERS substrates with improved sensitivity and performance. In the current study, we demonstrate a cavity-coupled structure that assists in enhancing the light-matter interaction leading to an improved SERS performance. Using numerical simulations, we demonstrate that the cavity-coupled structures can either enhance or suppress the SERS signal depending on the cavity length and the wavelength of interest. Furthermore, the proposed substrates are fabricated using low-cost large-area techniques. The cavity-coupled plasmonic substrate consists of a layer of gold nanospheres on an indium tin oxide (ITO)-Au-glass substrate. The fabricated substrates exhibit nearly a 9 times improvement in SERS enhancement as compared to the uncoupled substrate. The demonstrated cavity-coupling approach can also be used for enhancing other plasmonic phenomena like plasmonic trapping, plasmon-enhanced catalysis, and nonlinear signal generation.

Exciton Dipole Orientation of Strain-Induced Quantum Emitters in WSe2.

Transition metal dichalcogenides are promising semiconductors to enable advances in photonics and electronics and have also been considered as a host for quantum emitters. Particularly, recent advances demonstrate site-controlled quantum emitters in WSe2 through strain deformation. Albeit essential for device integration, the dipole orientation of these strain-induced quantum emitters remains unknown. Here we employ angular-resolved spectroscopy to experimentally determine the dipole orientation of strain-induced quantum emitters. It is found that with increasing local strain the quantum emitters in WSe2 undergo a transition from in-plane to out-of-plane dipole orientation if their emission wavelength is longer than 750 nm. In addition, the exciton g-factor remains with average values of g = 8.52 ± 1.2 unchanged in the entire emission wavelength. These findings provide experimental support of the interlayer defect exciton model and highlight the importance of an underlying three-dimensional strain profile of deformed monolayer semiconductors, which is essential to optimize emitter-mode coupling in nanoplasmonics.

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.

Controlling the Performance of Polymer Lasers via the Cavity Coupling.

The polarization and threshold of distributed feedback (DFB) polymer lasers were controlled by adjusting the cavity coupling. The cavity of DFB polymer lasers consisted of two gratings, which was fabricated by a two-beam multi-exposure holographic technique. The coupling strength of the cavity modes was tuned by changing the angle between the two gratings. The threshold of the polymer lasers decreased with reducing the coupling strength of the cavity modes. A minimum threshold was observed at the lowest coupling strength. Moreover, the azimuthally polarized output of the polymer lasers was modified by changing the cavity coupling. These results may provide additional perspectives to improve the performance of DFB polymer lasers.

Effect of Rabi splitting on the low-temperature electron paramagnetic resonance signal of anthracite.

Specific distortions of the EPR signal of bulk anthracite are observed at low temperatures. They are accompanied by variations in the microwave oscillator frequency and are explained by the manifestation of the Rabi splitting due to the strong coupling between electron spins and the cavity, combined with the use of an automatic frequency-control (AFC) system. EPR signals are recorded at negligible saturation in the temperature range of 4-300K with use of the AFC system to keep the oscillator frequency locked to the resonant frequency of the TM110 cylinder cavity loaded with the sample. For the sample with a mass of 3.6mg the line distortions are observed below 50K and increase with temperature lowering. The oscillator frequency variations are used to estimate the coupling strength as well as the number of spins in the sample. It is shown that the spin-cavity coupling strength is inversely proportional to temperature and can be used for the absolute determination of the number of spins in a sample. Our results indicate that at low temperatures even 1016 spins of the anthracite sample, with a mass of about 0.5mg, can distort the EPR line.