Indistinguishable telecom band photons from a single Er ion in the solid state

Atomic defects in the solid state are a key component of quantum repeater networks for long-distance quantum communication¹. Recently, there has been significant interest in rare earth ions^2–4, in particular Er³⁺ for its telecom band optical transition^5–7 that allows long-distance transmission in optical fibres. However, the development of repeater nodes based on rare earth ions has been hampered by optical spectral diffusion, precluding indistinguishable single-photon generation. Here, we implant Er³⁺ into CaWO₄, a material that combines a non-polar site symmetry, low decoherence from nuclear spins⁸ and is free of background rare earth ions, to realize significantly reduced optical spectral diffusion. For shallow implanted ions coupled to nanophotonic cavities with large Purcell factor, we observe single-scan optical linewidths of 150 kHz and long-term spectral diffusion of 63 kHz, both close to the Purcell-enhanced radiative linewidth of 21 kHz. This enables the observation of Hong–Ou–Mandel interference⁹ between successively emitted photons with a visibility of V = 80(4)%, measured after a 36 km delay line. We also observe spin relaxation times T _1,s = 3.7 s and T _2,s > 200 μs, with the latter limited by paramagnetic impurities in the crystal instead of nuclear spins. This represents a notable step towards the construction of telecom band quantum repeater networks with single Er³⁺ ions.