High-efficiency single photon emission from a silicon T-center in a nanobeam

Silicon color centers, particularly the T center, offer potential as efficient quantum emitters and long-lived quantum memory in all-silicon systems. However, the T center's extended excited state lifetime hinders photon emission rates. In our study, we demonstrate high-efficiency single photon emission from a T center using a nanobeam. The nanobeam aligns well with a lensed fiber, enabling us to capture over 70% of the emission directly into a single-mode fiber, including emission from the zero-phonon line. This represents a crucial step toward silicon-based spin-photon interfaces for quantum computing and networks.