Purcell Enhancement of Silicon W Centers in Circular Bragg Grating Cavities

Generating single photons on demand in silicon is a challenge to the scalability of silicon-on-insulator integrated quantum photonic chips. While several defects acting as artificial atoms have recently demonstrated an ability to generate antibunched single photons, practical applications require tailoring of their emission through quantum cavity effects. In this work, we perform cavity quantum electrodynamics experiments with ensembles of artificial atoms embedded in silicon-on-insulator microresonators. The emitters under study, known as W color centers, are silicon tri-interstitial defects created upon self-ion implantation and thermal annealing. The resonators consist of circular Bragg grating cavities, designed for moderate Purcell enhancement (F-p = 12.5) and efficient luminescence extraction (eta(coll) = 40% for a numerical aperture of 0.26) for W centers located at the mode antinode. When the resonant frequency mode of the cavity is tuned with the zero-phonon transition of the emitters at 1218 nm, we observe a 20-fold enhancement of the zero-phonon line intensity, together with a 2-fold decrease of the total relaxation time in time-resolved photoluminescence experiments. Based on finite-difference time-domain simulations, we propose a detailed theoretical analysis of Purcell enhancement for an ensemble of W centers, considering the overlap between the emitters and the resonant cavity mode. We obtain a good agreement with our experimental results assuming a quantum efficiency of 65 +/- 10% for the emitters in bulk silicon. Therefore, W centers open promising perspectives for the development of on-demand sources of single photons by harnessing cavity quantum electrodynamics in silicon photonic chips.