Emission enhancement of erbium in a reverse nanofocusing waveguide

Since Purcell’s seminal report 75 years ago, electromagnetic resonators have been used to control light-matter interactions to make brighter radiation sources and unleash unprecedented control over quantum states of light and matter. Indeed, optical resonators such as microcavities and plasmonic antennas offer excellent control but only over a limited spectral range. Strategies to mutually tune and match emission and resonator frequency are often required, which is intricate and precludes the possibility of enhancing multiple transitions simultaneously. In this letter, we report a strong radiative emission rate enhancement of Er 3+ -ions across the telecommunications C-band in a single plasmonic waveguide based on the Purcell effect. Our gap waveguide uses a reverse nanofocusing approach to efficiently enhance, extract and guide emission from the nanoscale to a photonic waveguide while keeping plasmonic losses at a minimum. Remarkably, the large and broadband Purcell enhancement allows us to resolve Stark-split electric dipole transitions, which are typically only observed under cryogenic conditions. Simultaneous radiative emission enhancement of multiple quantum states is of great interest for photonic quantum networks and on-chip data communications. Emission enhancement and extraction from quantum emitters is a major challenge for photon sources in e.g. quantum photonic networks. Here the authors propose a broadband waveguide platform which allows to boost, extract, and guide quantum emission within integrated photonic networks.