Applied Physics Seminar
Igor Aharonovich received his B.Sc (2005) and M.Sc (2007) in Materials Eng from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. He then moved to Australia and pursued his PhD studies at the University of Melbourne under the supervision of Prof Steven Prawer. During his PhD, Igor developed experimental techniques to engineer novel, ultra bright single photon emitters in diamond. In 2011, Igor took a postdoctoral position at Harvard University at the group of Prof Evelyn Hu. His research was focused on nanofabrication of optical cavities out of diamond, SiC and GaN. He also carried out nanophotonic experiments including coupling of emitters to optical cavities, turning of cavity resonances and low temperature high resolution spectroscopy. In 2013 Igor has joined the School of Physics and Advanced Materials as a Senior Lecturer and a CPD fellow. His research will be focused on wide bandgap semiconductors and their implementation in Nanophotonics and Bio-sensing. Igor received several international awards including Chancellor Postdoctoral Fellowship from UTS (2013) Harvard Postdoctoral Award for Professional Development (2012), SPIE Research Excellence Award (2010) and Sigma Xi Research grant (2009). He was also awarded the 2013 Discovery Early Career Research Award from the ARC.
Quantum emitters (or single photon sources) are important building blocks for many applications in nanophotonics and quantum optics. Wide bandgap semiconductors are particularly interesting in this respect due their ability to host bright emitters in the whole spectral range – from ultraviolet to the infra-red.
In the first part of my talk, I will discuss an easy approach to engineer narrowband single emitters in diamond that can emit more than million counts per second at room temperature. I will also describe avenues to engineer optical resonators (e.g. photonic crystal cavities) from diamond. Cavity resonances as high as ~ 4000 at the visible spectral range are measured, and Purcell enhancement is realized.
In the second part of my talk, I will discuss an emerging platform for nanophotonics – namely silicon carbide (SiC). While SiC is primarily employed for modern optoelectronic devices, a recent discovery of single emitters and their optically active spin transitions, highlights their potential for nanophotonics application. I will show our recent discovery of novel quantum emitters based on SiC nanoparticles and nanostructures as well as methodologies to fabricate SiC cavities from a monolithic single crystal silicon carbide.