Silicon T centers present the promising possibility to generate optically active spin qubits in an all-silicon device. However, these color centers exhibit long excited state lifetimes and a low Debye-Waller factor, making them dim emitters with low efficiency into the zero-phonon line. Nanophotonic cavities can solve this problem by enhancing radiative emission into the zero-phonon line through the Purcell effect. In this work we demonstrate cavity-enhanced emission from a single T center in a nanophotonic cavity. We achieve a two-orders of magnitude increase in brightness of the zero-phonon line relative to waveguide-coupled emitters, a 23% collection efficiency from emitter to fiber, and an overall emission efficiency into the zero-phonon line of 63.4%. We also observe a lifetime enhancement of 5, corresponding to a Purcell factor exceeding 18 when correcting for the emission to the phonon sideband. These results pave the way towards efficient spin-photon interfaces in silicon photonics.
@article{arxiv.2310.13808,
title = {Cavity enhanced emission from a silicon T center},
author = {Fariba Islam and Chang-Min Lee and Samuel Harper and Mohammad Habibur Rahaman and Yuqi Zhao and Neelesh Kumar Vij and Edo Waks},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2310.13808},
year = {2024}
}