Bright High-Purity Quantum Emitters in Aluminum Nitride Integrated Photonics

Solid-state quantum emitters (QEs) are fundamental in photonic-based quantum information processing. There is strong interest to develop high-quality QEs in III-nitride semiconductors because of their sophisticated manufacturing driven by large and growing applications in optoelectronics, high voltage power transistors, and microwave amplifiers. Here, the generation and direct integration of QEs in an aluminum nitride-based photonic integrated circuit platform is reported. For individual waveguide-integrated QEs, an off-chip count rate exceeding 6 × 104 counts per second (cps; saturation rate >8.6 × 104 cps) is measured at room temperature under continuous-wave (CW) excitation. In an unpatterned thin-film sample, antibunching with g(2)(0) ∼0.08 and photon count rates exceeding 8 × 105 cps (saturation rate >1 × 106 cps) are measured at room temperature under CW excitation. Although spin and detailed optical line width measurements are left for future work, these results already show the potential for high-quality QEs monolithically integrated in a wide range of III-nitride device technologies that would enable new quantum device opportunities and industrial scalability.
United States. Army Research Office MURI ((Ab-Initio Solid-State Quantum Materials Grant W911NF-18-1-0431)
National Science Foundation (U.S.). Research Advanced by Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering (Grant CHE-1839155)
Air Force Research Laboratory. RITA program ( FA8750-16-2-0141)
National Research Foundation of Korea (Grants 2015R1A6A3A03020926 and 2018R1D1A1B07043390)