Nanodiamond in optical fibre.

Abstract

Diamond, prized as both a gemstone and a cutting and polishing material, has recently been recognised for another remarkable property, a host of optically active colour centre defects. With the rise of interest in these colour centres, due to the unique optical properties, comes a need for interfacing with other optical platforms. Recent advances have attempted to fabricate optical structures from the diamond itself, or to combine these colour centres with the well-known fabrication techniques of other materials by placing nanodiamond crystals on the surface of other structures, such as microdisks, microspheres, and optical fibres. This thesis presents a new approach to this integration by demonstrating the fabrication of a hybrid nanodiamond-glass material. This technique embeds the nanodiamond within the optical structure, offering interaction with the bound optical fields, protection, and ease of fabrication. A range of optical structures has previously been fabricated from the chosen glass, tellurite, and fabrication of an optical fibre is demonstrated here. Also presented is the derivation of a model describing coupling of an emitter to an optical fibre. While used here to investigate coupling of diamond colour centres to the optical fibre modes, it is more generally applicable to any emitter. These results show the first steps of a new approach to diamond integrated photonics.