Room-temperature spontaneous superradiance from single diamond nanocrystals

Carlo Bradac; Mattias T Johnsson; Matthew van Breugel; Ben Q Baragiola; Rochelle Martin; Mathieu L Juan; Gavin K Brennen; Thomas Volz

doi:10.1038/s41467-017-01397-4

Room-temperature spontaneous superradiance from single diamond nanocrystals

Nat Commun. 2017 Oct 31;8(1):1205. doi: 10.1038/s41467-017-01397-4.

Authors

Carlo Bradac^{1

2}, Mattias T Johnsson^{1

2}, Matthew van Breugel^{1

2}, Ben Q Baragiola^{1

2}, Rochelle Martin^{1

2}, Mathieu L Juan^{1

2}, Gavin K Brennen^{1

2}, Thomas Volz^{3

4}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics & Astronomy, Macquarie University, NSW, 2109, Australia.
² ARC Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems, Macquarie University, NSW, 2109, Australia.
³ Department of Physics & Astronomy, Macquarie University, NSW, 2109, Australia. thomas.volz@mq.edu.au.
⁴ ARC Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems, Macquarie University, NSW, 2109, Australia. thomas.volz@mq.edu.au.

Abstract

Superradiance (SR) is a cooperative phenomenon which occurs when an ensemble of quantum emitters couples collectively to a mode of the electromagnetic field as a single, massive dipole that radiates photons at an enhanced rate. Previous studies on solid-state systems either reported SR from sizeable crystals with at least one spatial dimension much larger than the wavelength of the light and/or only close to liquid-helium temperatures. Here, we report the observation of room-temperature superradiance from single, highly luminescent diamond nanocrystals with spatial dimensions much smaller than the wavelength of light, and each containing a large number (~ 10³) of embedded nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centres. The results pave the way towards a systematic study of SR in a well-controlled, solid-state quantum system at room temperature.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't