Efficient photon coupling from a diamond nitrogen vacancy center by integration with silica fiber

Rishi N Patel; Tim Schröder; Noel Wan; Luozhou Li; Sara L Mouradian; Edward H Chen; Dirk R Englund

doi:10.1038/lsa.2016.32

Efficient photon coupling from a diamond nitrogen vacancy center by integration with silica fiber

Light Sci Appl. 2016 Feb 12;5(2):e16032. doi: 10.1038/lsa.2016.32. eCollection 2016 Feb.

Authors

Rishi N Patel^{1

2}, Tim Schröder¹, Noel Wan¹, Luozhou Li¹, Sara L Mouradian¹, Edward H Chen¹, Dirk R Englund¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
² Department of Applied Physics, Stanford University, 348 Via Pueblo Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.

Abstract

A central goal in quantum information science is to efficiently interface photons with single optical modes for quantum networking and distributed quantum computing. Here, we introduce and experimentally demonstrate a compact and efficient method for the low-loss coupling of a solid-state qubit, the nitrogen vacancy (NV) center in diamond, with a single-mode optical fiber. In this approach, single-mode tapered diamond waveguides containing exactly one high quality NV memory are selected and integrated on tapered silica fibers. Numerical optimization of an adiabatic coupler indicates that near-unity-efficiency photon transfer is possible between the two modes. Experimentally, we find an overall collection efficiency between 16% and 37% and estimate a single photon count rate at saturation above 700 kHz. This integrated system enables robust, alignment-free, and efficient interfacing of single-mode optical fibers with single photon emitters and quantum memories in solids.

Keywords: diamond nanophotonics; fiber optics; nitrogen vacancy center; quantum optics; single photon source.