26th Australian Institute of Physics Congress and the Australian and New Zealand Conference on Optics and Photonics

Near-infrared optically addressable spins and single photon emission in hexagonal boron nitride

Not scheduled

20m

Belinda Hutchinson Building (The University of Sydney )

Contributed Oral AIP | Quantum Science and Technology (QST)

Speaker

Fatin Al Sadab (RMIT University)

Description

Optically addressable solid-state spins are an important platform for practical quantum technologies. The Van der Waals material hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) is a promising host because it contains a wide variety of optical emitters, but observations of addressable spins have thus far been sparse, and most emission occurs in the visible part of the spectrum. Recently, our team has reported robust optical readout of spin pairs in hBN with emission wavelengths spanning from violet to the near-infrared I (750 – 1000 nm).[1] It was found that these broadband spin pairs [2] exist naturally in a variety of hBN samples from bulk crystals to nanopowders, and can be coherently controlled across the entire wavelength range. Furthermore, the optimal wavelengths are identified for independent readout of spin pairs and boron vacancy spin defects co-existing in the same sample. Here, we report that optically addressable spins and single-photon emission from hBN also occur in the near-infrared II spectral region (1000-1500 nm). These results establish the ubiquity of the optically addressable spin pair system in hBN across a broad parameter space, making it a versatile playground for spin-based quantum technologies from visible to telecom wavelength ranges.

References
[1] P. Singh, I.O. Robertson, S.C. Scholten, A.J. Healey, H. Abe, T. Ohshima, H.H. Tan, M. Kianinia, I. Aharonovich, D.A. Broadway, P. Reineck, J.-P. Tetienne, Violet to Near‐Infrared Optical Addressing of Spin Pairs in Hexagonal Boron Nitride, Advanced Materials 37(12) (2025).
[2] I.O. Robertson, B. Whitefield, S.C. Scholten, P. Singh, A.J. Healey, P. Reineck, M. Kianinia, G. Barcza, V. Ivády, D.A. Broadway, I. Aharonovich, J.-P. Tetienne, I.O. Robertson, B. Whitefield, S.C. Scholten, P. Singh, A.J. Healey, P. Reineck, M. Kianinia, G. Barcza, V. Ivády, D.A. Broadway, I. Aharonovich, J.-P. Tetienne, A charge transfer mechanism for optically addressable solid-state spin pairs, Nature Physics 2025 21:12 21(12) (2026).