Time-Resolved Photoionization Detection of a Single Er3+ Ion in Silicon

Guangchong Hu; Gabriele G de Boo; Brett Cameron Johnson; Jeffrey Colin McCallum; Matthew J Sellars; Chunming Yin; Sven Rogge

doi:10.1021/acs.nanolett.1c04072

Time-Resolved Photoionization Detection of a Single Er³⁺ Ion in Silicon

Nano Lett. 2022 Jan 12;22(1):396-401. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.1c04072. Epub 2022 Jan 3.

Authors

Guangchong Hu¹, Gabriele G de Boo¹, Brett Cameron Johnson^{2

3}, Jeffrey Colin McCallum², Matthew J Sellars⁴, Chunming Yin^{1

5}, Sven Rogge¹

Affiliations

¹ Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology, School of Physics, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales 2052, Australia.
² Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology, School of Physics, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3010, Australia.
³ Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology, School of Engineering, RMIT University, Melbourne, Victoria 3001, Australia.
⁴ Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology, Research School of Physics and Engineering, Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Central Territory 0200, Australia.
⁵ CAS Key Laboratory of Microscale Magnetic Resonance, School of Physical Sciences and CAS Center for Excellence in Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230 026, People's Republic of China.

PMID: 34978822
DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.1c04072

Abstract

The detection of charge trap ionization induced by resonant excitation enables spectroscopy on single Er³⁺ ions in silicon nanotransistors. In this work, a time-resolved detection method is developed to investigate the resonant excitation and relaxation of a single Er³⁺ ion in silicon. The time-resolved detection is based on a long-lived current signal with a tunable reset and allows the measurement under stronger and shorter resonant excitation in comparison to time-averaged detection. Specifically, the short-pulse study gives an upper bound of 23.7 μs on the decay time of the ⁴I_13/2 state of the Er³⁺ ion. The fast decay and the tunable reset allow faster repetition of the single-ion detection, which is attractive for implementing this method in large-scale quantum systems of single optical centers. The findings on the detection mechanism and dynamics also provide an important basis for applying this technique to detect other single optical centers in solids.

Keywords: Erbium; Photoionization; Silicon; Single optical centers.