Bright Single-Photon Emission from Individual Tin-Vacancy Centers in Multi-Cone Diamond Waveguides

Abstract

Diamonds containing color centers have recently gathered significant attention for photonic quantum technologies, including quantum sensing, photonic quantum computers, and quantum networks. Among the various color centers, tin-vacancy (SnV) centers are particularly promising due to the high emission efficiency from the zero-phonon line and due to their long spin coherence times. However, the extraction of photons from diamond remains a key challenge. Here we demonstrate high photon extraction from a single SnV center incorporated in a diamond nanopillar with tapered sidewalls and a multi-cone structure. A sharp emission peak with a full width at half maximum (FWHM) of $6$nm was observed at a wavelength of $619$nm. Furthermore, the second-order correlation function exhibited an antibunching dip well below $g^{(2)}(0)=0.5$, indicating single-photon emission. Remarkably, the emitter achieved a high saturation count rate of approximately $9$Mcps. These results establish our nanopillar platform as a promising candidate for bright and stable quantum sources and sensors based on SnV centers in diamond.