Optically-Induced Modulation and Programming of Diamond Photonic Cavities
Abstract
Single-crystal diamond combines exceptional optical, thermal, and mechanical properties while hosting optically addressable and spin-coherent colour centres, making it a promising platform for integrated quantum and nonlinear photonics. However, practical post-fabrication mechanisms for dynamically controlling and tuning monolithic diamond photonic circuits remain limited. Here, we demonstrate all-optical modulation and long-lived tuning of suspended diamond Fabry--Perot nanobeam cavities containing nitrogen-vacancy centres. Under 532~nm illumination, the infrared (1000 to 1100~nm) cavity response is governed by two competing contributions: a well-understood thermo-optic red-shift, and a novel charge-mediated blue-shift that we attribute to the free-carrier plasma dispersion effect. With 10~mW of 20~kHz-modulated green light, we achieve an infrared modulation depth of approximately 45\% of the available reflection contrast. Green illumination also produces quasi-permanent photo-refractive resonance blue-shifts, with a maximum observed tuning of 3.15~nm (0.87~THz), without measurable degradation of the cavity linewidth or contrast. Achieving the same cavity shift in a lithium-niobate Pockels modulator would require 200 to 500~V across a 5 μm electrode gap. These results establish a monolithic diamond nanophotonic platform combining agile and reversible modulation with long-lived optical reconfiguration, two key ingredients in photonic technologies.
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BibTeX
@misc{zhu2026opticallyinduced,
title = {{Optically-Induced Modulation and Programming of Diamond Photonic Cavities}},
author = {Yuchun Zhu and Amirali Arabmoheghi and Nicolas Le Thomas and Niels Quack and Valentin Goblot and Christophe Galland},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.37163},
eprint = {2609.37163},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.37163},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Optically-Induced Modulation and Programming of Diamond Photonic Cavities
AU - Yuchun Zhu
AU - Amirali Arabmoheghi
AU - Nicolas Le Thomas
AU - Niels Quack
AU - Valentin Goblot
AU - Christophe Galland
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/29
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.37163
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.37163
AB - Single-crystal diamond combines exceptional optical, thermal, and mechanical properties while hosting optically addressable and spin-coherent colour centres, making it a promising platform for integrated quantum and nonlinear photonics. However, practical post-fabrication mechanisms for dynamically controlling and tuning monolithic diamond photonic circuits remain limited. Here, we demonstrate all-optical modulation and long-lived tuning of suspended diamond Fabry--Perot nanobeam cavities containing nitrogen-vacancy centres. Under 532~nm illumination, the infrared (1000 to 1100~nm) cavity response is governed by two competing contributions: a well-understood thermo-optic red-shift, and a novel charge-mediated blue-shift that we attribute to the free-carrier plasma dispersion effect. With 10~mW of 20~kHz-modulated green light, we achieve an infrared modulation depth of approximately 45\% of the available reflection contrast. Green illumination also produces quasi-permanent photo-refractive resonance blue-shifts, with a maximum observed tuning of 3.15~nm (0.87~THz), without measurable degradation of the cavity linewidth or contrast. Achieving the same cavity shift in a lithium-niobate Pockels modulator would require 200 to 500~V across a 5 μm electrode gap. These results establish a monolithic diamond nanophotonic platform combining agile and reversible modulation with long-lived optical reconfiguration, two key ingredients in photonic technologies.
ER -