Modification of the spontaneous emission rate of nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond by coupling to plasmons

Abstract

Nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond are widely studied both as a testbed for solid state quantum optics and for their applications in quantum information processing and magnetometry. Here we demonstrate coupling of the nitrogen-vacancy centers to gap plasmons in metal nano-slits. We use diamond samples where nitrogen-vacancy centers are implanted tens of nanometers under the surface. Silver nano-slits are patterned on the sample such that diamond ridges tens of nanometers wide fill the slit gap. We measure enhancement of the spontaneous emission rate of the zero photon line by a factor of 3 at a temperature of 8K. © 2011 SPIE.