All-silicon quantum light source by embedding an atomic emissive center in a nanophotonic cavity

W Redjem; Y Zhiyenbayev; W Qarony; V Ivanov; C Papapanos; W Liu; K Jhuria; Z Y Al Balushi; S Dhuey; A Schwartzberg; L Z Tan; T Schenkel; B Kanté

doi:10.1038/s41467-023-38559-6

All-silicon quantum light source by embedding an atomic emissive center in a nanophotonic cavity

Nat Commun. 2023 Jun 7;14(1):3321. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-38559-6.

Authors

W Redjem^#¹, Y Zhiyenbayev^#¹, W Qarony^#¹, V Ivanov², C Papapanos¹, W Liu², K Jhuria², Z Y Al Balushi^{3

4}, S Dhuey⁵, A Schwartzberg⁵, L Z Tan⁵, T Schenkel², B Kanté^{6

7}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
² Accelerator Technology and Applied Physics Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
³ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
⁴ Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
⁵ Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
⁶ Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA. bkante@berkeley.edu.
⁷ Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA. bkante@berkeley.edu.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Silicon is the most scalable optoelectronic material but has suffered from its inability to generate directly and efficiently classical or quantum light on-chip. Scaling and integration are the most fundamental challenges facing quantum science and technology. We report an all-silicon quantum light source based on a single atomic emissive center embedded in a silicon-based nanophotonic cavity. We observe a more than 30-fold enhancement of luminescence, a near-unity atom-cavity coupling efficiency, and an 8-fold acceleration of the emission from the all-silicon quantum emissive center. Our work opens immediate avenues for large-scale integrated cavity quantum electrodynamics and quantum light-matter interfaces with applications in quantum communication and networking, sensing, imaging, and computing.