Diamond – An Engineer’s Best Friend
Prof. Marko Lončar
Harvard University
Diamond possesses remarkable physical and chemical properties, and in many ways is the ultimate engineering material. For example, it is transparent from the ultra-violet to infrared, has a high refractive index (n = 2.4), strong optical nonlinearity (Kerr and Raman) and a wide variety of light-emitting defects. These properties make diamond a highly desirable material for many applications, including those in quantum and nonlinear photonics, high power optics and optomechanics. In my talk, I will review the advances in nanotechnology that have enabled fabrication of nanoscale optical devices and chip-scale systems in diamond. Using these approaches we were able to demonstrate high-Q factor diamond photonic crystal cavities, frequency combs, and Raman lasers. One exciting application of diamond is in the field of quantum information science and technology. At the heart of these applications are diamond’s luminescent defects—color centers—that have all the essential elements for quantum technology, including storage, logic, and communication of quantum information. Recent efforts aimed at coupling of NV and SiV color centers to optical, mechanical and optomechanical resonators will be discussed. Finally, application of diamond for realization of high-power optical components (e.g. mirrors, windows and filters), capable of withstanding CW intensities in the excess of 1 GW/cm2 will be presented.