https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e20020023
Room temperature stable single-photon source
1
Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique (UMR 8501 du
CNRS) , B.P. 147, 91403 Orsay Cedex, France
2
Laboratoire de Physique de la matière condensée,
École polytechnique, 91128 Palaiseau, France
Corresponding authors: a alexios.beveratos@iota.u-psud.fr - b jean-philippe.poizat@iota.u-psud.fr
Received:
1
August
2001
Revised:
2
October
2001
Published online: 15 February 2002
We report on the realization of a stable solid state room temperature
source for single photons. It is based on the fluorescence of a single
nitrogen-vacancy (NV) color center in
a diamond nanocrystal. Antibunching has been observed
in the fluorescence light under both continuous and pulsed excitation.
Our source delivers 
s-1 single-photon pulses at an excitation repetition
rate of 10 MHz. The number of two-photon pulses is reduced by a factor of five compared to
strongly attenuated coherent sources.
PACS: 42.50.Dv – Nonclassical field states; squeezed, antibunched, and sub-Poissonian states; operational definitions of the phase of the field; phase measurements / 03.67.-a – Quantum information / 78.67.-n – Optical properties of nanoscale materials and structures
© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag, 2002
