Hemmer Publishes Paper in Nature Nanotechnology

Dr. Phillip Hemmer and several co-authors have published a paper in the prestigious research publication Nature Nanotechnology.

The paper, "A diamond nanowire single-photon source," can be found at http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nnano.2010.6.html.

"Basically this is the first demonstration of nano-photonic structures on diamond that are suitable for applications such as quantum computing, ultrasensitive nanoscale magnetometers, or future quantum optics applications like single atom nonlinear optics and solid state lasers," Hemmer said. "Many of these applications make use of single color centers like the nitrogen-vacancy (NV).

"Previous demonstrations of diamond photonic nanostructures showed nice electron microscope pictures along with claims that these structures could be eventually used for quantum optics applications, but in reality the background fluorescence of these nanostructures was much too high to allow single color centers to be observed. In contrast the structures we report on in this paper easily allow single NV color centers to be seen,"Hemmer said.

The full listing of authors for this paper is Thomas M. Babinec, Birgit J. M. Hausmann, Mughees Khan, Yinan Zhang, Jeronimo R. Maze, Philip R. Hemmer and Marko Loncar.

Hemmer, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University, joined the department in January 2002. He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Dayton in 1976 and his Ph.D. in physics from MIT in 1984. His interest areas are in solid materials for quantum optics, especially “dark resonance” excitation, materials and techniques for resonant nonlinear optics, phase-conjugate-based turbulence aberration and compensation, spectral holeburning materials and techniques for ultra-dense memories and high temperature operation, quantum computing in solid materials, quantum communication and teleportation in trapped atoms, holographic optical memory materials, smart pixels devices, optical correlators, photorefractive applications, atomic clocks and laser trapping and cooling.

Honors include receiving the Ruth and William Neely ’52/Dow Chemical Fellowship, an outstanding faculty award from the department, an NSF Fellowship, the Air Force Research Laboratory Chief Scientist’s award and the AFOSR Star Team Award three times. He also is a member of the Optical Society of America, S.P.I.E. and American Physical Society.

Nature Nanotechnology is a multidisciplinary journal that publishes papers of the highest quality and significance in all areas of nanoscience and nanotechnology. The journal covers research into the design, characterization and production of structures, devices and systems that involve the manipulation and control of materials and phenomena at atomic, molecular and macromolecular scales. Both bottom-up and top-down approaches — and combinations of the two — are covered.

Source: Texas A&M University