Hybrid Metamaterial Platforms for Room-Temperature Chiral Quantum Emitters

Chiral single-photon emitter (SPE) platforms are crucial for noise-resilient binary information transfer, providing a stable basis for quantum encryption and nonreciprocal optical communication [1]. We demonstrate a hybrid system integrating hexagonal boron nitride containing oxygen-etching-induced vacancy defects as single-photon sources with glancing-angle-deposited nano-helical metamaterials [2]. These intrinsically chiral helices act as circular polarization filters, enabling control of photon emission handedness. Finite-element modeling reveals selective coupling of the emitter dipole to plasmonic modes, resulting in polarization-dependent Purcell enhancement. Experimentally, we studied both dispersed and directly deposited hybrid configurations, identifying structural parameters that maximize chiral contrast and circular polarization selectivity. The combined theoretical and experimental results demonstrate a scalable route to room-temperature, circularly polarized SPE, providing a compact foundation for quantum photonic communication systems.

[1]Dowran et al., Laser Photon.Rev. 2400705 (2024).[2] Kilic et al., Adv.Funct.Mater. 31, 2010329 (2021).