We demonstrate successful cooling of ultrathin fiber tapers and their coupling with nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers in nanodiamonds at cryogenic temperatures. Nanodiamonds containing multiple NV centers are deposited on ultrathin fiber tapers with diameters ranging from 450-500 nm. The fiber tapers were successfully cooled down to 9 K with our special fiber mount and an optimization of cooling speed. The fluorescence coupled with the fiber tapers showed characteristic sharp zero-phonon lines of neutral and negatively charged NV centers. The present demonstration is important for the future NV-based quantum information devices and sensitive nanoscale cryogenic magnetometry.
We report the substrate effects on the zero-phonon transitions and suppression of phonon side bands in the NV center
spectrum. Fluorescence spectra of NV centers in cryogenic temperatures were measured by depositing diamond
nanocrystals on different substrates including glass slides, undoped Si, and silica (1~2μm) on undoped Si (SiO2/Si). We
found that SiO2/Si substrate was an effective substrate to suppress the phonon side band from spectra of NV- centers.
Temperature dependence of NV- zero-phonon line Debye-Waller factor on Si and SiO2/Si were measured, from 2.5K to
230K, Debye-Waller factor decreased linearly on both of the two substrates.
KEYWORDS: Single photon, Luminescence, Near field, Fiber couplers, Nitrogen, Optical filters, Quantum information, Fiber lasers, Confocal microscopy, Near field optics
Further miniaturization of funcionalized quantum optical systems down to nm-dimensions and their integration
into fibre optical networks is a major challange for future implementations of quantum information, quantum
communication and quantum processing applications. Furthermore, scalability, long-term stability and room- as
well as liquid helium temperature operation are benchmarking properties of such systems.
In this paper, we present the realizations of fiber-coupled diamond-based single photon systems. First, an
alignment free, μm-scale single photon source consisting of a single nitrogen vacancy center facet coupled to
an optical fiber operating at room temperature is presented. Near-field coupling of the single nitrogen vacancy
center is realized by placing a pre-selected nanodiamond directly on the fiber facet in a bottom-up approach.
Its photon collection efficiency is comparable to a far-field collection via an air objective with a numerical
aperture of 0.82. As the system can be simultaneously excited and its photons be recollected through the
fiber, it can be used as a fiber-connected single quantum sensor that allows optical near-field probing on the
quantum level. Secondly single nanodiamonds that contain nitrogen vacancy defect centers, are near-field coupled
to a tapered fiber of 300 nanometer in diameter. This system provides a record-high number of 97 kcps single
photons from a single defect center into a single mode optical fiber. The entire system can be cooled to liquid
Helium temperatures and reheated without breaking. Furthermore, the system can be evanescently coupled to
various nanophotonic structures, e.g. microresonators. The system can also be applied for integrated quantum
transmission experiments and the realization of two-photon interference. It can be used as a quantum-randomnumber
generator as well as a probe for nano-magnetometry.
An ultrahigh-Q optical microcavity coupled with a tapered fiber is an ideal system for the cavity quantum
electrodynamics (CQED). In particular realizing this system at cryogenic temperature is vitally important and has been
recently explored for various CQED applications including solid-state atom-photon strong coupling, vibrational mode
cooling, and photonic quantum gates. These cryogenic fiber-coupled microcavity systems, however, suffer from
mechanical vibrations due to cooling systems and distortions caused by large temperature change. These factors may
cause the degradation in polarization of probe light field in the system. Here we report the analysis of the polarization
state in a tapered-fiber-coupled microsphere cavity at cryogenic temperatures. By scanning the wavelength of the probe
light at around 637 nm, which can be used for the diamond nitrogen vacancy centers, the spectral analysis of the
polarization state was performed at 8-30 K. We have found that the degree of polarization (DOP, classical analogue of
purity) at cryogenic temperatures does not show significant change compared to that measured at room temperature. This
fact indicates that the system can conserve the polarization at low temperature to the extent comparable to that at room
temperature, which is enough for the evaluation of the quantum phase gate.
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