We report the first observation of stable single photon sources in silicon carbide (SiC). These sources are extremely bright and operate at room temperature demonstrating that SiC is a viable material in which to realize various quantum information,
computation and photonic applications. The maximum single photon count rate detected is 700k counts/s with an inferred quantum efficiency around 70%. The single photon sources are due to intrinsic deep level defects constituted of carbon antisite-vacancy pairs. These are shown to be formed controllably by electron irradiation. The variability of the temporal kinetics of these single defects is investigated in detail.
We present direct imaging of the emission pattern of individual chromium-based single photon emitters in diamond and measure their quantum efficiency. By imaging the excited state transition dipole intensity distribution in the back focal plane of hi
gh numerical aperture objective, we determined that the emission dipole is oriented nearly orthogonal to the diamond-air interface. Employing ion implantation techniques, the emitters were engineered with various proximities from the diamond-air interface. By comparing the decay rates from the single chromium emitters at different depths in the diamond crystal, an average quantum efficiency of 28% was measured.
