Multimodal Purcell enhancement and optical coherence of Eu3+ ions in a single nanoparticle coupled to a microcavity

Abstract

Europium-doped nanocrystals constitute a promising material for a scalable future quantum computing platform. Long-lived nuclear spin states could serve as qubits addressed via coherent optical transitions. In order to realize an efficient spin-photon interface, we couple the emission from a single nanoparticle to a fiber-based microcavity under cryogenic conditions. The spatial and spectral tunability of the cavity permits us to place individual nanoparticles in the cavity, to measure the inhomogeneous linewidth of the ions, and to show a multi-modal Purcell-enhancement of two transition in Eu3+. A halving of the free-space lifetime to 1.0 ms is observed, corresponding to a 140-fold enhancement of the respective transition. Furthermore, we observe a narrow optical linewidth of 3.3 MHz for a few-ion ensemble in the center of the inhomogeneous line. The results represent an important step towards the efficient readout of single Eu3+ ions, a key requirement for the realization of single-ion-level quantum processing nodes in the solid state.