Room temperature stable single-photon source

Alexios Beveratos (1) , Sergei Kuehn (1) , Rosa Brouri (1) , Thierry Gacoin (2) , Jean-Philippe Poizat (1) , Philippe Grangier (1)

1 Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique / Optique quantique
2 LPMC - Laboratoire de physique de la matière condensée

We report on the realization of a stable solid state room temperature source for single photons. It is based on the fluorescence of a single nitrogen-vacancy (NV) color center in a diamond nanocrystal. Antibunching has been observed in the fluorescence light under both continuous and pulsed excitation. Our source delivers 2*10^4 single-photon pulses per second at an excitation repetition rate of 10 MHz. The number of two-photon pulses is reduced by a factor of five compared to strongly attenuated coherent sources.

Domaines: Physique Quantique [quant-ph]

Alexios Beveratos, Sergei Kuehn, Rosa Brouri, Thierry Gacoin, Jean-Philippe Poizat, et al.. Room temperature stable single-photon source. The European Physical Journal D : Atomic, molecular, optical and plasma physics, 2002, 18(2), pp.191. ⟨hal-00509136⟩