All-silicon quantum light source by embedding an atomic emissive center in a nanophotonic cavity
Walid Redjem, Yertay Zhiyenbayev, Wayesh Qarony, Vsevolod Ivanov, Christos Papapanos, Wei Liu, Kaushalya Jhuria, Zakaria Y. Al Balushi, Scott Dhuey, Adam Schwartzberg, Liang Z. Tan, T. Schenkel, Boubacar Kanté
Abstract
Silicon is the most scalable optoelectronic material but has suffered from its inability to generate directly and efficiently classical or quantum light on-chip. Scaling and integration are the most fundamental challenges facing quantum science and technology. We report an all-silicon quantum light source based on a single atomic emissive center embedded in a silicon-based nanophotonic cavity. We observe a more than 30-fold enhancement of luminescence, a near-unity atom-cavity coupling efficiency, and an 8-fold acceleration of the emission from the all-silicon quantum emissive center. Our work opens immediate avenues for large-scale integrated cavity quantum electrodynamics and quantum light-matter interfaces with applications in quantum communication and networking, sensing, imaging, and computing.