Cavity-Enhanced Single-Photon Source Based on the Silicon-Vacancy Center in Diamond

Sources of individual photons have applications in quantum cryptography, computation, and metrology, but truly scalable sources are still needed. The authors couple silicon-vacancy centers to a high-Q microcavity, yielding a room-temperature source with the potential for high efficiency, brightness, and spectral purity. This setup improves spectral density by more than two orders of magnitude and could offer single-photon rates above 1 GHz, as well as generation of indistinguishable photons.