Nanoscale sculpturing of single photons with dielectrics

目前的室温光子源要么相对于退相干太慢(Ns)，要么太大(Mm)，无法集成到量子芯片上。在这里，我们提出了一种范式转变来克服这些限制，并通过利用纳米介质结构中的雕塑电磁模式来提高光与物质的相互作用许多数量级，从而开发新的量子光源，而不存在等离子体的吸收、猝灭和加热缺陷。我们的团队拥有纳米光子学、等离子体光谱学、单分子光谱学和阴极发光光谱学绘制光子局部态密度图的专业知识，在解决金属纳米系统的限制之外的介电纳米光子学方面具有独特的优势。我们对纳米结构中的光设计的方法是基于对介电纳米颗粒中Mie共振的操纵。纳米介电材料可以在没有光学损耗的情况下实现电磁场的纳米局域化，通过利用共局域的电模和磁模以及它们的干涉来控制光荧光，并以前所未有的效率为非线性转换提供额外的自由度。我们的目标是通过纳米级的介质天线和腔体来开发明亮的纳米级单光子和双光子量子源。我们将从共振调谐、近场空间雕刻和光子态密度等方面对纳米介质的工作原理有一个基本的了解，然后将它们用于增强单发射体荧光和非线性光子(对)转换。我们的最终目标是在室温下获得单个光子和相关光子的明亮光源，其亚波长尺寸适合集成到芯片上的量子电路上。我们预计，纳米介电材料可以带来实用的纳米级量子光学，而等离子体主要是由于光吸收而无法实现的，并达到纳米级光子对产生的里程碑，这将使量子光学发生革命性的变化，为量子系统的纳米级工程开辟一条真正的道路。

Current room-temperature photon sources are either too slow (ns) with respect to decoherence or too bulky (mm) for integration on quantum chips. Here, we propose a paradigm shift to overcome these limitations and develop new quantum light sources by exploiting sculptured electromagnetic modes in nano-dielectric architectures to boost light-matter interactions by many orders of magnitude, without the absorption, quenching and heating drawbacks of plasmonics. Our team encompasses expertise in nano-photonics, plasmonics, single molecule spectroscopy, and photonic local density of state mapping by cathodoluminescence spectroscopy, and is uniquely placed to address dielectric nanophotonics beyond the limitations of metallic nano-systems. Our approach to light design in nanoscale structures is based on the manipulation of Mie resonances in dielectric nanoparticles. Nanodielectrics can nano-localise electromagnetic fields with no optical losses, control light fluorescence by exploiting co-localised electric and magnetic modes as well as their interference, and offer additional degrees of freedom for nonlinear conversion with unprecedented efficiency. We aim to develop bright nanoscale quantum sources of single and pair photons through nanoscale dielectric antennas and cavities. We will develop the fundamental understanding of the working principles of nano dielectrics in terms of resonance tuning, spatial sculpturing of near fields, and the photonic density of states, and then we will utilise them for enhancement of single emitter fluorescence and nonlinear photon (pair) conversion.Our ultimate goal is to obtain a bright source of individual and correlated photons at room temperature with sub-wavelength size suitable for integration on quantum circuits on chips. We envisage that nano-dielectrics can lead to practical nano-scale quantum optics, where plasmonics has failed to deliver mainly due to optical absorption, and reach the milestone of nanoscale photon pair generation which would revolutionise quantum optics, opening a real path to nanoscale engineering of quantum systems.