Room temperature stable single-photon source

Abstract

We report on the realization of a stable solid state room temperature source for single photons. It is based on the fluorescence of a single nitrogen-vacancy (NV) color center in a diamond nanocrystal. Antibunching has been observed in the fluorescence light under both continuous and pulsed excitation. Our source delivers 2*10^4 single-photon pulses per second at an excitation repetition rate of 10 MHz. The number of two-photon pulses is reduced by a factor of five compared to strongly attenuated coherent sources.

7 pages, 10 figures, accepted to the special issue of the European Physical Journal D on "Quantum interference and cryptographic keys: novel physics and advancing technologies", proceedings of the conference QUICK 2001