Spin-controlled generation of indistinguishable and distinguishable photons from silicon vacancy centres in silicon carbide.
Naoya MoriokaCharles BabinRoland NagyIzel GedizErik HesselmeierDi LiuMatthew JoliffeMatthias NiethammerDurga DasariVadim VorobyovRoman KolesovRainer StöhrJawad Ul HassanNguyen Tien SonTakeshi OhshimaPéter UdvarhelyiGergő ThieringÁdám GaliJörg WrachtrupFlorian KaiserPublished in: Nature communications (2020)
Quantum systems combining indistinguishable photon generation and spin-based quantum information processing are essential for remote quantum applications and networking. However, identification of suitable systems in scalable platforms remains a challenge. Here, we investigate the silicon vacancy centre in silicon carbide and demonstrate controlled emission of indistinguishable and distinguishable photons via coherent spin manipulation. Using strong off-resonant excitation and collecting zero-phonon line photons, we show a two-photon interference contrast close to 90% in Hong-Ou-Mandel type experiments. Further, we exploit the system's intimate spin-photon relation to spin-control the colour and indistinguishability of consecutively emitted photons. Our results provide a deep insight into the system's spin-phonon-photon physics and underline the potential of the industrially compatible silicon carbide platform for measurement-based entanglement distribution and photonic cluster state generation. Additional coupling to quantum registers based on individual nuclear spins would further allow for high-level network-relevant quantum information processing, such as error correction and entanglement purification.