Ricerc@Sapienza

Single-photon sources are assuming an increasingly important role in the era of the second quantum revolution. Encrypted information exchange of the future will be based on quantum key distribution, which in turn needs the availability of reliable single-photon sources. In the realm of the possible candidates for these sources, transition metal dichalcogenides are gaining a growing success. These materials have a crystalline structure which favors their exfoliation into atomically thin layers. Two-dimensional materials are a virgin ground for discoveries in fundamental physics but recently proved to be also an already mature field for technological application. It is possible to induce single-photon emitters in monolayers of these materials, in a controlled position and with a scalable process. Their emission properties can also be tuned with different methods, including strain application, with several works appearing in the literature.
Very recently, the single-photon emitters in transition metal dichalcogenides were coupled to a photonic structure to enhance their emission rate, a fundamental request towards their implementation into efficient devices for quantum protocols. The scope of this project is to connect the missing pieces of this puzzle and fabricate a transition metal dichalcogenides single-photon source, with tunable energy and high repetition rates.
To do so we will exploit the knowledge developed in the last years in our group in Sapienza University together with the ongoing collaborations with universities and excellent research centers in Europe. The Nanophotonics group in the Physics Department of our university will provide an entire laboratory with several researchers and Ph.D. students working on the topic and their expertise in strain tuning technologies.