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Emission of nitrogen–vacancy centres in diamond shaped by topological photonic waveguide modes

Nature Nanotechnology volume 20, pages 1605–1610 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

As the ability to integrate single-photon emitters into photonic architectures improves, so does the need to characterize and understand their interaction. Here we use a scanning diamond nanocrystal to investigate the interplay between the emission of room-temperature nitrogen–vacancy (NV) centres and a proximal topological waveguide. In our experiments, NVs serve as local, spectrally broad light sources, which we exploit to characterize the waveguide bandwidth as well as the correspondence between the light injection site and the directionality of wave propagation. We find that near-field coupling to the waveguide influences the spectral shape and ellipticity of the NV photoluminescence, revealing nanostructured light fields through polarization and amplitude contrasts exceeding 50%, with a spatial resolution set by the nanoparticle size. Our results expand on the sensing modalities afforded by colour centres, highlighting novel opportunities for on-chip quantum optics devices that leverage topological photonics to optimally manipulate and read out single-photon emitters.

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Fig. 1: Scanning colour centre microscopy of a topological photonic waveguide.
Fig. 2: NV centres as a broadband light source.
Fig. 3: Correlated ellipticity between scattered and emitted PL.
Fig. 4: Polarization-sensitive imaging of the photonic crystal.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Code availability

All source codes for data analysis and numerical modelling used in this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge helpful discussion with V. Menon and T. An. R.K. and C.A.M. acknowledge support by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, National Quantum Information Science Research Centers, Co-design Center for Quantum Advantage (C2QA) under contract number DE-SC0012704. S.K., A.V. and A.B.K. acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) via grant NSF-2328993. J.F. acknowledges support from the NSF grant NSF-2216838. G.I.L.M. acknowledges NSF grant NSF-2208863. C. acknowledges NSF grant NSF-2203904; R.M. acknowledges support from NSF via grant NSF-2316693. We acknowledge access to the facilities and research infrastructure of the NSF CREST IDEALS, grant number NSF-2112550. The Flatiron Institute is a division of the Simons Foundation.

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Author notes

  1. Chandan

    Present address: Department of Physics, BMS College of Engineering Bengaluru, Bengaluru, India

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, CUNY – The City College of New York, New York, NY, USA

    Raman Kumar,  Chandan, Gabriel I. López Morales, Richard Monge, Anton Vakulenko, Svetlana Kiriushechkina, Alexander B. Khanikaev, Johannes Flick & Carlos A. Meriles

  2. Department of Electrical Engineering, CUNY – The City College of New York, New York, NY, USA

    Anton Vakulenko, Svetlana Kiriushechkina & Alexander B. Khanikaev

  3. Graduate Center, CUNY – The City College of New York, New York, NY, USA

    Alexander B. Khanikaev, Johannes Flick & Carlos A. Meriles

  4. Center for Computational Quantum Physics, Flatiron Institute, New York, NY, USA

    Johannes Flick

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Contributions

R.K., C., A.B.K. and C.A.M. conceived the experiments. C. led early experiments with drop-casted nanoparticles showing directional propagation of PL; R.K. led the experiments in scanning probe geometry with technical assistance from R.M.; S.K., A.V., A.B.K., G.I.L.M. and J.F. carried out the modelling. All authors analysed the data; C.A.M. wrote the paper with input from all authors.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Carlos A. Meriles.

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Nature Nanotechnology thanks Renaud Bachelot, Romain Quidant and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Kumar, R., Chandan, López Morales, G.I. et al. Emission of nitrogen–vacancy centres in diamond shaped by topological photonic waveguide modes. Nat. Nanotechnol. 20, 1605–1610 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-025-02001-3

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