Research
Quantum light–matter interactions
What can a single emitter do when the vacuum around it is engineered?
We place one, two, or a few quantum emitters — colloidal quantum dots, color centers in diamond, and other solid-state emitters — inside nanogap cavities, and study how the cavity rewrites their interaction with the vacuum. In this way we have made single-photon sources at telecom wavelengths with emission lifetimes of tens of picoseconds, their spontaneous emission rates enhanced up to ten-thousand-fold.
We are now going after the effects that accompany such extreme enhancement: the energy shifts and collective emission the vacuum induces, coherence created by the vacuum itself, and processes that free space suppresses, such as two-photon emission and pair generation from a single nanoscale device. Together these point toward a single goal: solid-state quantum light sources, working at room temperature, whose quantum behavior is set by their environment rather than by their material.
Key papers
- Solution-processed ultrafast, room-temperature single-photon source at 1550 nm
S. Zhang, A. J. Traverso, E. A. Dolgopolova, A. Singh, H. Kishida, M. Y. Livshits, C. J. Sheehan, E. G. Bowes, J. A. Hollingsworth, M. H. Mikkelsen, ACS Nano 19, 19035–19045 (2025) · DOI - Room-temperature picosecond single photon emission from a silicon vacancy center in diamond
Hengming Li, Deniz Acil, Andrew M. Boyce, Nicholas S. Yama, Christian Pederson, Srivatsa Chakravarthi, Kai-Mei C. Fu, Maiken H. Mikkelsen, ACS Nano 19, 19310–19317 (2025) · DOI — cover article - Plasmonic diamond membranes for ultrafast silicon vacancy emission
A. M. Boyce, H. Li, N. C. Wilson, D. Acil, A. Shams-Ansari, S. Chakravarthi, C. Pederson, Q. Shen, N. Yama, K.-M. C. Fu, M. Loncar, M. H. Mikkelsen, Nano Letters 24, 3575–3580 (2024) · DOI - Ultrafast room-temperature single photon emission from quantum dots coupled to plasmonic nanocavities
T. B. Hoang, G. M. Akselrod, M. H. Mikkelsen, Nano Letters 16, 270–275 (2016) · DOI - Ultrafast spontaneous emission source using plasmonic nanoantennas
T. B. Hoang, G. M. Akselrod, C. Argyropoulos, J. Huang, D. R. Smith, M. H. Mikkelsen, Nature Communications 6, 7788 (2015) · DOI - Ultrafast lifetime and bright emission from graphene quantum dots using plasmonic nanogap cavities
H. Kishida, M. H. Mikkelsen, Nano Letters 22, 904–910 (2022) · DOI
The other questions
- Atomic-scale nanophotonics — How are the rules of light–matter interaction rewritten when the field varies across a single emitter?
- Nonlinear and ultrafast photonics — Can the environment itself be changed faster than the matter inside it can respond?
- Quantum and 2D materials in nanogaps — Can a nanogap drive a material into states it cannot reach on its own?