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Hopping of the center-of-mass of single G centers in silicon-on-insulator
Auteur(s): Durand A., Baron Y., Udvarhelyi Péter, Cache F., R. Krithika V, Herzig Tobias, Khoury Mario, Pezzagna Sébastien, Meijer Jan, Hartmann Jean-Michel, Reboh Shay, Abbarchi Marco, Robert-Philip I., Gali Adam, Gérard Jean-Michel, Jacques V., Cassabois G., Dréau A.
(Document sans référence bibliographique) Texte intégral en Openaccess :
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Ref Arxiv: 2404.15069
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Résumé: Among the wealth of single fluorescent defects recently detected in silicon, the G center catches interest for its telecom single-photon emission that could be coupled to a metastable electron spin triplet. The G center is a unique defect where the standard Born-Oppenheimer approximation breaks down as one of its atoms can move between 6 lattice sites under optical excitation. The impact of this atomic reconfiguration on the photoluminescence properties of G centers is still largely unknown, especially in silicon-on-insulator (SOI) samples. Here, we investigate the displacement of the center-of-mass of the G center in silicon. We show that single G defects in SOI exhibit a multipolar emission and zero-phonon line fine structures with splittings up to $\sim1$ meV, both indicating a motion of the defect central atom over time. Combining polarization and spectral analysis at the single-photon level, we evidence that the reconfiguration dynamics are drastically different from the one of the unperturbed G center in bulk silicon. The SOI structure freezes the delocalization of the G defect center-of-mass and as a result, enables to isolate linearly polarized optical lines. Under above-bandgap optical excitation, the central atom of G centers in SOI behaves as if it were in a 6-slot roulette wheel, randomly alternating between localized crystal sites at each optical cycle. Comparative measurements in a bulk silicon sample and ab initio calculations highlight that strain is likely the dominant perturbation impacting the G center geometry. These results shed light on the importance of the atomic reconfiguration dynamics to understand and control the photoluminescence properties of the G center in silicon. More generally, these findings emphasize the impact of strain fluctuations inherent to SOI wafers for future quantum integrated photonics applications based on color centers in silicon.
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