Irfan Bulu, Harvard
Abstract
Applications to Enhanced Single Photon Sources, and Optically Reconfigurable Nano-photonic Devices
Plasmonics and photonics at nano-scale offer new possibilities at improving the performance of optical devices, building new functionality, and creating chip scale integrated devices. In the first part of my talk, I will present our recent experimental and theoretical work on plasmonic nano-cavities for enhanced room temperature single photon sources based on nitrogen-vacancy color centers in diamond. I will discuss various cavity designs from the point of practical device implementation, and show that the emission rate, excitation rate, and collection efficiency from single emitters can be improved significantly in an extremely small footprint device. Furthermore, I show that our scalable, top-down nanofabrication technique maintains the crucial properties of embedded NV centers, and is therefore compatible with requirements needed for realization of quantum systems based on diamond. In the second part of the talk, I will present our work on optically reconfigurable nano-photonic devices. By taking advantage of the optical forces between two coupled high-Q cavities and using an efficient actuation scheme, it was possible to achieve broadband reconfiguration and tune the resonance wavelength by several line-widths. Tuning via optical forces demonstrates a universal scheme for nano-photonic device reconfiguration. In addition to optomechanical tuning, thermal tuning is also present in our device platform. I will discuss how we characterized thermal effects by using a novel on chip temperature calibration method. Finally, I will show how mechanical aspects of our device can be controlled.