Erbium-implanted materials for quantum communication applications
Paul Stevenson, Christopher M. Phenicie, Isaiah Gray, Sebastian P. Horvath, Sacha Welinski, Austin M. Ferrenti, Alban Ferrier, Philippe Goldner, Sujit Das, R. Ramesh, R. J. Cava, Nathalie P. de Leon, Jeff D. Thompson
Abstract
Erbium-doped materials can serve as spin-photon interfaces with optical transitions in the telecom $C$ band, making them an exciting class of materials for long-distance quantum communication. However, the spin and optical coherence times of ${\mathrm{Er}}^{3+}$ ions are limited by currently available host materials, motivating the development of new ${\mathrm{Er}}^{3+}$-containing materials. Here we demonstrate the use of ion implantation to efficiently screen prospective host candidates, and show that disorder introduced by ion implantation can be mitigated through post-implantation thermal processing to achieve inhomogeneous linewidths comparable to bulk linewidths in as-grown samples. We present optical spectroscopy data for each host material, which allows us to determine the level structure of each site, allowing us to compare the environments of ${\mathrm{Er}}^{3+}$ introduced via implantation and via doping during growth. We demonstrate that implantation can generate a range of local environments for ${\mathrm{Er}}^{3+}$, including those observed in bulk-doped materials, and that the populations of these sites can be controlled with thermal processing.