Colossal photon bunching in quasiparticle-mediated nanodiamond cathodoluminescence

Abstract

Nanoscale control over the second-order photon correlation function $g^{(2)}(\tau )$ is critical to emerging research in nonlinear nanophotonics and integrated quantum information science. Here we report on quasiparticle control of photon bunching with $g^{(2)}(0)>45$ in the cathodoluminescence of nanodiamond nitrogen vacancy (NV${}^0$) centers excited by a converged electron beam in an aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscope. Plasmon-mediated NV${}^0$ cathodoluminescence exhibits a 16-fold increase in luminescence intensity correlated with a three fold reduction in photon bunching compared with that of uncoupled NV${}^0$ centers. This effect is ascribed to the excitation of single temporally uncorrelated NV${}^0$ centers by single surface plasmon polaritons. Spectrally resolved Hanbury Brown--Twiss interferometry is employed to demonstrate that the bunching is mediated by the NV${}^0$ phonon sidebands, while no observable bunching is detected at the zero-phonon line. The data are consistent with fast phonon-mediated recombination dynamics, a conclusion substantiated by agreement between Bayesian regression and Monte Carlo models of superthermal NV${}^0$ luminescence.

arXiv comment4 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (10)

• The nitrogen-vacancy colour centre in diamond
• Quantum Plasmonics
• Entanglement of two qubits mediated by one-dimensional plasmonic waveguides
• Enhanced Single Photon Emission from a Diamond-Silver Aperture
• The breakdown flash of Silicon Avalance Photodiodes - backdoor for eavesdropper attacks?
• Spatially resolved quantum nano-optics of single photons using an electron microscope
• Multiphoton Effects Enhanced Due to Ultrafast Photon-Number Fluctuations
• Extraordinary optical transmission of multimode quantum correlations via localized surface plasmons
• Tracking Emission Rate Dynamics of NV Centers in Nanodiamonds
• Anti-bunching dynamics of plasmonically mediated entanglement generation

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Blue-Light-Emitting Color Centers in High-Quality Hexagonal Boron Nitride
• Phonon-induced multi-color correlations in hBN single-photon emitters
• Cubic BN optical gap and intragap optically active defects
• Purcell effect of nitrogen-vacancy centers in nanodiamond coupled to propagating and localized surface plasmons revealed by photon-correlation cathodoluminescence
• Sub-to-super-Poissonian photon statistics in cathodoluminescence of color center ensembles in isolated diamond crystals
• Superbunching in cathodoluminescence: a master equation approach
• Engineering the Collapse of Lifetime Distribution of Nitrogen-Vacancy Centers in Nanodiamonds
• Near-field imaging of plasmonic nanopatch antennas with integrated semiconductor quantum dots
• Substrate-Assisted Cathodoluminescence