EAGER: Quantum Emitters in Silicon and Devices for Scalable Quantum Networks

Quantum light sources will play a fundamental role in the future of technologies including quantum communications, sensing, and computing. Although many types of quantum emitters have been investigated, they all face long standing challenges making it fundamentally difficult to scale quantum systems to larger systems. This work will focus on silicon, an intrinsically scalable material platform and investigate a particular emitter with strong potential for spin-photon interface in the telecommunication band.

The multidisciplinary project will contribute to national quantum initiatives and will be coupled with numerous educational objectives including (1) the full participation of underrepresented minorities via presentations at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), and (2) the integration of K-12 students and undergraduate students in the research.

Technical description: Solid state quantum emitters require fabrication at the atomic and molecular scales and have suffered from challenges such as reproducibility when fabricated in a host material. Additionally, many quantum sources do not emit in the telecom band and thus require nonlinear processes to make the single photon useful, affecting system energy efficiency.

This work will help understand the properties of newly discovered quantum light emitters in silicon. Such emitters can power future quantum networks and computers. The prospect of quantum optics in silicon is an exciting avenue because it has the potential to address the scaling and integration challenges.

The exploratory proposal will investigate (1) the manufacturing of the new defect in silicon, (2) the characterization of color centers in silicon, and (3) the spin properties of the defect in silicon.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.