Nanoscale resolved mapping of the dipole emission of hBN color centers with a scattering-type scanning near-field optical microscope

Abstract

Color centers in hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) are promising candidates as quantum light sources for future technologies. In this work, we utilize a scattering-type near-field optical microscope (s-SNOM) to study the photoluminescence (PL) emission characteristics of such quantum emitters in metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy grown hBN. On the one hand, we demonstrate direct near-field optical excitation and emission through interaction with the nanofocus of the tip resulting in a sub-diffraction limited tip-enhanced PL hotspot. On the other hand, we show that indirect excitation and emission via scattering from the tip significantly increases the recorded PL intensity. This demonstrates that the tip-assisted PL (TAPL) process efficiently guides the generated light to the detector. We apply the TAPL method to map the in-plane dipole orientations of the hBN color centers on the nanoscale. This work promotes the widely available s-SNOM approach to applications in the quantum domain including characterization and optical control.

References in corpus (3)

• Phonon-assisted emission and absorption of individual color centers in hexagonal boron nitride
• Resonant and phonon-assisted ultrafast coherent control of a single hBN color center
• Probing the Local Dielectric Function by Near Field Optical Microscopy Operating in the Visible Spectral Range

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Creation and Microscopic Origins of Single-Photon Emitters in Transition Metal Dichalcogenides and Hexagonal Boron Nitride
• Systematic investigation of the generation of luminescent emitters in hBN via irradiation engineering
• Single photon emitters in hBN: Limitations of atomic resolution imaging and potential sources of error