Quantum Optics Semibar by Milos Rancic

Trivalent erbium is well known for its optical transition at 1550 nm; corresponding to the telecoms fibre transmission window. For this reason, erbium is vital for classical data transmission in optical fibre networks. In 2013 we demonstrated resonant optical excitation and electronic readout of a single erbium dopant in a silicon based Single Electron Transistor (SET).

This presentation will summarise our on-going investigation into these optical-electronic hybrid erbium doped devices. In particular, we are focused on investigating the microscopic crystal field structure of these single erbium ions, and attempting to measure coherence and spin lifetimes in this system.

The ultimate goal of our research is to develop an erbium based “optical bus” to interface phosphor in silicon (P:Si) based quantum computers with a quantum network, by coupling phosphor and erbium qubits in a single silicon device.