Tag Archives: Stephen Doorn

Carbon nanotube optics and the quantum

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A US-France-Germany collaboration has led to some intriguing work with carbon nanotubes. From a June 18, 2018 news item on ScienceDaily,

Researchers at Los Alamos and partners in France and Germany are exploring the enhanced potential of carbon nanotubes as single-photon emitters for quantum information processing. Their analysis of progress in the field is published in this week’s edition of the journal Nature Materials.

“We are particularly interested in advances in nanotube integration into photonic cavities for manipulating and optimizing light-emission properties,” said Stephen Doorn, one of the authors, and a scientist with the Los Alamos National Laboratory site of the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT). “In addition, nanotubes integrated into electroluminescent devices can provide greater control over timing of light emission and they can be feasibly integrated into photonic structures. We are highlighting the development and photophysical probing of carbon nanotube defect states as routes to room-temperature single photon emitters at telecom wavelengths.”

A June 18, 2018 Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) news release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, expands on the theme,

The team’s overview was produced in collaboration with colleagues in Paris (Christophe Voisin [Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris (ENS)]) who are advancing the integration of nanotubes into photonic cavities for modifying their emission rates, and at Karlsruhe (Ralph Krupke [Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT]) where they are integrating nanotube-based electroluminescent devices with photonic waveguide structures. The Los Alamos focus is the analysis of nanotube defects for pushing quantum emission to room temperature and telecom wavelengths, he said.

As the paper notes, “With the advent of high-speed information networks, light has become the main worldwide information carrier. . . . Single-photon sources are a key building block for a variety of technologies, in secure quantum communications metrology or quantum computing schemes.”

The use of single-walled carbon nanotubes in this area has been a focus for the Los Alamos CINT team, where they developed the ability to chemically modify the nanotube structure to create deliberate defects, localizing excitons and controlling their release. Next steps, Doorn notes, involve integration of the nanotubes into photonic resonators, to provide increased source brightness and to generate indistinguishable photons. “We need to create single photons that are indistinguishable from one another, and that relies on our ability to functionalize tubes that are well-suited for device integration and to minimize environmental interactions with the defect sites,” he said.

“In addition to defining the state of the art, we wanted to highlight where the challenges are for future progress and lay out some of what may be the most promising future directions for moving forward in this area. Ultimately, we hope to draw more researchers into this field,” Doorn said.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Carbon nanotubes as emerging quantum-light sources by X. He, H. Htoon, S. K. Doorn, W. H. P. Pernice, F. Pyatkov, R. Krupke, A. Jeantet, Y. Chassagneux & C. Voisin. Nature Materials (2018) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-018-0109-2 Published online June 18, 2018

This paper is behind a paywall.

Doped carbon nanotubes and a new path to quantum encryption

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An April 12, 2016 news item on ScienceDaily describes a use for  carbon nanotubes in the field of quantum encryption,

Critical information, ranging from credit card numbers to national security data, is sent in streams of light, or laser pulses. However, the data transmitted in this manner can be stolen by splitting out a few photons (packets of light) from the laser pulse. Such eavesdropping could be prevented by encoding the data into single photons. But that requires generating single photons. Researchers demonstrated a new material, made from tiny carbon tubes, that emits the desired photons at room temperature.

A March 31, 2016 US Department of Energy news release, which originated the news item, explains the concept in more detail,

Digital eavesdropping could be prevented by encoding bits of information in the properties, or quantum mechanical states, of single photons. Single photons emitted by carbon nanotubes altered, or doped with oxygen, are especially attractive for realizing this quantum information technology.

Summary

Single photon generation requires an isolated, quantum mechanical, two-level system that can emit only one photon in one excitation-emission cycle. While artificial nanoscale materials (such as quantum dots and vacancy centers in diamonds) have been explored for single photon generation, none have emerged as the ideal candidate that meets all of the technological requirements. These requirements include the ability to generate single photons in the 1.3 to 1.5 µm fiber optic telecommunication wavelength range at room temperature. Earlier studies revealed that carbon nanotubes were not suited for use in quantum communications because the tubes required extremely low temperatures and had strong photoluminescence fluctuations. In contrast to these earlier findings, researchers led by Han Htoon and Stephen Doorn of the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies showed that oxygen doping of carbon nanotubes can lead to fluctuation-free photoluminescence emission in the telecommunication wavelength range. Experiments measuring the time-distribution of two successive photon emission events also unambiguously demonstrated single photon emission at room temperature. Furthermore, because oxygen doping is achieved through a simple deposition of a silicon dioxide layer, these doped carbon nanotubes are fully compatible with silicon microfabrication technology and can be fabricated into electrically driven single photon sources. In addition, the silicon dioxide layer encapsulating the nanotubes allows for their easy integration into electronic and photonic integrated circuits. Beyond the implementation of this new method into quantum communication technologies, nanotube-based single photon sources could enable other transformative quantum technologies, including ultra-sensitive absorption measurements, sub-diffraction imaging, and linear quantum computing.

The researchers have provided an illustration of doped carbon nanotubes,

The deposition of a silicon dioxide layer (yellow layer) on a carbon nanotube (gray spheres) introduces solitary oxygen dopants (red spheres). A single photon (red and white star) is emitted when a dopant is excited by a laser pulse (green arrow). Image courtesy of the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies

The deposition of a silicon dioxide layer (yellow layer) on a carbon nanotube (gray spheres) introduces solitary oxygen dopants (red spheres). A single photon (red and white star) is emitted when a dopant is excited by a laser pulse (green arrow). Image courtesy of the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper, which was published a surprisingly long time ago,

Room-temperature single-photon generation from solitary dopants of carbon nanotubes by Xuedan Ma, Nicolai F. Hartmann, Jon K. S. Baldwin, Stephen K. Doorn, & Han Htoon.  Nature Nanotechnology 10, 671–675 (2015)  doi:10.1038/nnano.2015.136 Published online 13 July 2015

This paper is behind a paywall.