Nano-fabricated solid immersion lenses registered to single emitters in diamond

A PDF version is also available for printing.

on-line version

Luca Marseglia1, J. P. Hadden1, A. C. Stanley-Clarke1, J. P. Harrison1, B. Patton1, Y.-L. D. Ho1, B. Naydenov2, F. Jelezko2, J. Meijer3, P. R. Dolan4, J. M. Smith4, J. G. Rarity1, J. L. O'Brien1

1 Centre for Quantum Photonics, H. H. Wills Physics Laboratory &
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Bristol,
Merchant Venturers Building, Woodland Road, Bristol, BS8 1UB, UK
2 3 Physikalisches Institut, Universität Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 57, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany
3 Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universitätsstraße 150, 44801, Bochum, Germany
4 Department of Materials, University of Oxford,Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3PH, UK

Abstract. We describe a technique for fabricating micro- and nano-structures incorporating fluorescent defects in diamond with a positional accuracy in the hundreds of nanometers. Using confocal fluorescence microscopy and focused ion beam (FIB) etching we first locate a suitable defect with respect to registration marks on the diamond surface and then etch a structure using these coordinates. We demonstrate the technique here by etching an 8 &mu m diameter hemisphere positioned such that a single negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy defect lies at its origin. This type of structure increases the photon collection efficiency by removing refraction and aberration losses at the diamond-air interface. We make a direct comparison of the fluorescence photon count rate before and after fabrication and observe an 8-fold increase due to the presence of the hemisphere.

Keywords: N-V center, quantum computing, solid immersion lenses, cavity quantum electrodynamics, registering

BibTeX Record:

@Article{Marseglia10,
  author       = {L. Marseglia},
  title        = {Nano-fabricated solid immersion lenses registered to single emitters in diamond}
  institution  = {Centre for Quantum Photonics, University of Bristol},
  year         = 2010,
  type         = {recent}
}