We demonstrate optical probing of spectrally resolved single Nd rare-earth ions in yttrium orthovanadate. The ions are coupled to a photonic crystal resonator and show strong enhancement of the optical emission rate via the Purcell effect, resulting in near radiatively limited single photon emission. The measured high coupling cooperativity between a single photon and the ion allows for the observation of coherent optical Rabi oscillations. This could enable optically controlled spin qubits, quantum logic gates, and spin-photon interfaces for future quantum networks.
@article{arxiv.1803.07520,
title = {Optically addressing single rare-earth ions in a nanophotonic cavity},
author = {Tian Zhong and Jonathan M. Kindem and John G. Bartholomew and Jake Rochman and Ioana Craiciu and Varun Verma and Sae Woo Nam and Francesco Marsili and Matthew D. Shaw and Andrew D. Beyer and Andrei Faraon},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1803.07520},
year = {2019}
}