Enhanced and directional single-photon emission in hyperbolic metamaterials

W. D. Newman, C. L. Cortes, and Z. Jacob, “Enhanced and directional single-photon emission in hyperbolic metamaterials”, Journal of the Optical Society of America B, vol. 30, no. 4, pp. 766–775, 2013.

Abstract

We propose an approach to enhance and direct the spontaneous emission from isolated emitters embedded inside hyperbolic metamaterials (HMMs) into single-photon beams. The approach rests on collective plasmonic Bloch modes of HMMs, which propagate in highly directional beams called quantum resonance cones. We propose a pumping scheme using the transparency window of the HMM that occurs near the topological transition. Finally, we address the challenge of outcoupling these broadband resonance cones into vacuum using a dielectric bullseye grating. We give a detailed analysis of quenching and design the metamaterial to have a huge Purcell factor in a broad bandwidth in spite of the losses in the metal. Our work should help motivate experiments in the development of single-photon sources for broadband emitters such as nitrogen vacancy centers in diamond.

Last updated on 05/29/2021