Effectively enhancing silicon-vacancy emission in a hybrid diamond-in-pit microstructure

Solid-state photon emitters at room temperature appear to be promising candidates for a variety of nanophotonic applications. In this regard, coupling photon emitters with various optical cavities providing pronounced directivity, high photoexcitation and emission rates is extremely desirable. Here, we introduce the novel concept of deterministically coupling color centers in nanodiamonds (NDs) with gold nanopits. We show that in this case, emission of silicon-vacancy (SiV−) centers at the zero-phonon line can exceed that of a ND on a gold surface by a factor of 62. The obtained results reveal an effective pumping of the SiV-centers in NDs along with the active switching of the SiV-centers from the dark to the bright state by plasmon mode that opens the way to design controllable resonance systems with diamond-based photonic emitters.