Single photon emission from SiV centres in diamond produced by ion implantation 论文

摘要

We report the observation of single photon emission from single SiV (silicon-vacancy) centres in diamond produced by ion implantation. The high photostability and the narrow emission bandwidth of about 5 nm at room temperature make SiV centres interesting as a single photon source in practical quantum cryptography. We discuss problems that arise from the nonradiaditve transitions which lower the brightness of the source. The development of reliable devices for the generation of single photons is crucial for many applications such as, for example, quantum cryptography [1], optical quantum computation [2] as well as experiments on the foundations of quantum optics [3, 4]. Many implementations of single photon sources have been demonstrated [5–8]. One of the most promising candidates is a single photon source based on optically active defects in diamond, the so-called colour centres. The colour centres in diamond are well localized and photostable at room temperature, therefore a simple setup suffices for a single photon source. For single NV (nitrogen-vacancy) centres the generation of single photons has been demonstrated [7], and consequently has