An investigation towards single-emitter hybrid photonic devices

Light drives human life. As a species, sight is by far the dominant sense we use to navigate the world. With the advent of radio, optical fibers, and nanofabrication on basis of optical lithography, our uses and dependency on light has only increased. It is used on a global scale for optical fiber communication, which enables the World Wide Web. Ever improving techniques in nanofabrication enable us to carry smartphones in our pockets that are more powerful than the computers that brought humans to the moon. The uses of light-based technology are immensely diverse, from using luminescent markers to study the life cycle of single cells, tracking minute chemical changes in blood, to improving solar cells. Light is used in applications on scales as small as visualizing single atoms and molecules, and as large as mapping out our intergalactic neighborhood.
In this thesis, we study the interaction of light and matter at the nanoscale, and we aim to bring together a number of different components. The first of these concerns the trapping of light in so-called optical hybrid resonators. Such hybrids bring together different methods of containing light, where the goal is to hold on to the light as long as possible, while simultaneously squeezing it into the smallest possible volume. The other building block we investigate is that of single emitters. These are systems that absorb and emit only a single photon at a time, making them excellent communicators for small-scale electronic information. The second half of this thesis is dedicated to studying a particular type of these emitters, as well as how to best investigate their behavior.