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Published on: April 12, 2018
Ultrahigh-Purity Single-Photon Emission from 2D WSe2 via Effective Suppression of Classical Emission
Wenjing Wu1,2, Alex Strasser3, Zhongqi Xiu1
1Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77005, United States.
Abstract:
Single-photon emitters (SPEs) in two-dimensional WSe2 offer high extraction efficiency and on-chip compatibility, but achieving high purity remains challenging. We present two strategies to suppress classical emission and enhance purity in WSe2-based SPEs. In monolayer WSe2, we exploited the presence and absence of valley-spin locking in free and bound excitons, respectively, to achieve purity of 98.3% via polarization control and 99.0% combined with near-resonant excitation. In bilayer WSe2, we obtained 97.0% purity without polarization filtering, enabled by the indirect band gap and inversion symmetry. These values represent some of the highest as-measured purities reported for 2D TMD SPEs. Our methods do not require complex fabrication or instrumentation and are supported by first-principles calculations of the vacancy state of Se and spin degeneracy. This work offers practical pathways for realizing high-quality single-photon sources for emerging quantum technologies.
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