Optically Addressing Single Rare-Earth Ions in a Nanophotonic Cavity

Tian Zhong; Jonathan M Kindem; John G Bartholomew; Jake Rochman; Ioana Craiciu; Varun Verma; Sae Woo Nam; Francesco Marsili; Matthew D Shaw; Andrew D Beyer; Andrei Faraon

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.183603

Optically Addressing Single Rare-Earth Ions in a Nanophotonic Cavity

Phys Rev Lett. 2018 Nov 2;121(18):183603. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.183603.

Authors

Tian Zhong^{1

2

3}, Jonathan M Kindem^{1

2}, John G Bartholomew^{1

2}, Jake Rochman^{1

2}, Ioana Craiciu^{1

2}, Varun Verma⁴, Sae Woo Nam⁴, Francesco Marsili⁵, Matthew D Shaw⁵, Andrew D Beyer⁵, Andrei Faraon^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Kavli Nanoscience Institute and Thomas J. Watson, Sr., Laboratory of Applied Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA.
² Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA.
³ Institute for Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA.
⁴ National Institute of Standards and Technology, 325 Broadway, MC 815.04, Boulder, Colorado 80305, USA.
⁵ Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, California 91109, USA.

PMID: 30444379
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.183603

Abstract

We demonstrate optical probing of spectrally resolved single Nd^{3+} rare-earth ions in yttrium orthovanadate. The ions are coupled to a photonic crystal resonator and show strong enhancement of the optical emission rate via the Purcell effect, resulting in near radiatively limited single photon emission. The measured high coupling cooperativity between a single photon and the ion allows for the observation of coherent optical Rabi oscillations. This could enable optically controlled spin qubits, quantum logic gates, and spin-photon interfaces for future quantum networks.