Silicon Nitride Waveguides with Intrinsic Single-Photon Emitters for Integrated Quantum Photonics

Abstract

The recent discovery of room-temperature intrinsic single-photon emitters in silicon nitride (SiN)1 provides a unique opportunity for seamless monolithic integration of quantum light sources with the well-established SiN photonic platform. In this work, we successfully demonstrate the integration of intrinsic quantum emitters with planar waveguides composed of low-autofluorescence SiN and demonstrate single-photon emission coupling into the waveguide mode. The coupling of single-photon emission to the waveguide mode is confirmed by second-order autocorrelation measurements of light outcoupled off the photonic chip by grating couplers. Fitting the second-order autocorrelation histogram yields g(2)(0) = 0.15 ± 0.09 without spectral filtering or background correction, the outcoupled photon rate derived from saturation measurements is found to be 6 × 103 counts per second. This demonstrates the first successful coupling of photons from monolithically integrated SiN intrinsic single-photon emitters with waveguides composed of the same material. The results of our work pave the way toward the realization of scalable, technology-ready quantum photonic integrated circuitry efficiently interfaced with solid-state quantum emitters.