Enhanced single-photon emission from a diamond–silver aperture

• DOI: 10.1038/nphoton.2011.249
• Publication Date: 2011-10-07T19:13:02Z
• Authors: Jennifer T. Choy; Birgit J. M. Haus...; Thomas M. Babinec; Irfan Bulu; Mughees Khan; Patrick Maletinsky; Amir Yacoby; Marko Lončar
• Keywords: Quantum Physics; FOS: Physical sciences; 02 engineering and technology; 530; 7. Clean energy; plasmonics; 620; quantum physics; imaging and sensing; nanophotonics; Quantum Physics (quant-ph); 0210 nano-technology

16 pages, 4 figures<br/>We have developed a scalable method for coupling single color centers in diamond to plasmonic resonators and demonstrated Purcell enhancement of the single photon emission rate of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers. Our structures consist of single nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center-containing diamond nanoposts embedded in a thin silver film. We have utilized the strong plasmon resonances in the diamond-silver apertures to enhance the spontaneous emission of the enclosed dipole. The devices were realized by a combination of ion implantation and top-down nanofabrication techniques, which have enabled deterministic coupling between single NV centers and the plasmonic modes for multiple devices in parallel. The plasmon-enhanced NV centers exhibited over six-fold improvements in spontaneous emission rate in comparison to bare nanoposts and up to a factor of 3.6 in radiative lifetime reduction over bulk samples, with comparable increases in photon counts. The hybrid diamond-plasmon system presented here could provide a stable platform for the implementation of diamond-based quantum information processing and magnetometry schemes.<br/>