Given its unrivaled potential of integration and scalability, silicon is likely to become a key platform for large-scale quantum technologies. Individual electron-encoded artificial atoms either formed by impurities or quantum dots have emerged as a promising solution for silicon-based integrated quantum circuits. However, single qubits featuring an optical interface needed for large-distance exchange of information have not yet been isolated in such a prevailing semiconductor. Here we show the isolation of single optically-active point defects in a commercial silicon-on-insulator wafer implanted with carbon atoms. These artificial atoms exhibit a bright, linearly polarized single-photon emission at telecom wavelengths suitable for long-distance propagation in optical fibers. Our results demonstrate that despite its small bandgap (~ 1.1 eV) a priori unfavorable towards such observation, silicon can accommodate point defects optically isolable at single scale, like in wide-bandgap semiconductors. This work opens numerous perspectives for silicon-based quantum technologies, from integrated quantum photonics to quantum communications and metrology.
@article{arxiv.2001.02136,
title = {Single artificial atoms in silicon emitting at telecom wavelengths},
author = {W. Redjem and A. Durand and T. Herzig and A. Benali and S. Pezzagna and J. Meijer and A. Yu. Kuznetsov and H. S. Nguyen and S. Cueff and J. -M. Gérard and I. Robert-Philip and B. Gil and D. Caliste and P. Pochet and M. Abbarchi and V. Jacques and A. Dréau and G. Cassabois},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2001.02136},
year = {2020}
}