Photonic Structure Coupling and Strain Sensing with Single Photon Emitters in Diamond

The interaction of photonic structures with single photon emitters at visible wavelengths is of great interest in fundamental quantum information processing and biological sensing. At room temperature, colour centres in diamond have shown great advantages over other solid state emitters in many experiments.

In the first part of my talk I will present cost-effective polymer photonic structures on dielectric mirrors. We study the coupling efficiency of these structures to single nitrogen-vacancy centres. Firstly, I present structures allowing a confinement of the light within smaller numerical apertures. Secondly, we investigate structured polymer waveguides which do not require undercutting or suspension, coupled to single nitrogen-vacancy centres. Purcell factors up to a value of 6.2 are found. I conclude with crucial experimental steps towards the final polymer structures coupled to single nitrogen-vacancy centres in nanodiamond, including the addressing of nitrogen-vacancy centres to milled registration markers on distributed Bragg reflectors.

In the second part I will show how coherent spin manipulation techniques can be utilised. Here, we are able for the first time to measure the strain caused by the fabrication of photonic structures. We observe kilohertz Stark shifts of the hyperfine states and the influence on the dephasing time of the nitrogen-vacancy centres’ electron spin, and hence conclude that the nitrogen-vacancy centre is capable of sensing its own host diamond environment with high accuracy.