Purcell enhancement of a single silicon carbide color center with coherent spin control

Publication information:

Crook, Alexander L., Christopher P. Anderson, Kevin C. Miao, Alexandre Bourassa, Hope Lee, Sam L. Bayliss, David O. Bracher, et al. 2020. “Purcell Enhancement of a Single Silicon Carbide Color Center With Coherent Spin Control”. NanoLetters 20 (5): 3427-34.

Abstract

Silicon carbide has recently been developed as a platform for optically addressable spin defects. In particular, the neutral divacancy in the 4H polytype displays an optically addressable spin-1 ground state and near-infrared optical emission. Here, we present the Purcell enhancement of a single neutral divacancy coupled to a photonic crystal cavity. We utilize a combination of nanolithographic techniques and a dopant-selective photoelectrochemical etch to produce suspended cavities with quality factors exceeding 5000. Subsequent coupling to a single divacancy leads to a Purcell factor of ∼50, which manifests as increased photoluminescence into the zero-phonon line and a shortened excited-state lifetime. Additionally, we measure coherent control of the divacancy ground-state spin inside the cavity nanostructure and demonstrate extended coherence through dynamical decoupling. This spin-cavity system represents an advance toward scalable long-distance entanglement protocols using silicon carbide that require the interference of indistinguishable photons from spatially separated single qubits.