Daniel Higginbottom

Students from our Silicon Quantum Technology Lab at Quantum Days 2026 in Victoria, BC. A big shout out to the conference organizers for bringing so many talented quantum folks together.

Congratulations to my PhD student Moein Kazemi for winning the top poster prize at Quantum Days 2026! Read our paper on this work here: doi.org/10.1103/4mpw...

Delighted to present the recent work of our Silicon Quantum Technology lab at SFU at the Quantum Days conference in Victoria, BC today.

New PRL! We find a giant isotope effect in silicon T centres: swapping H → D massively boosts lifetime and emission efficiency. Great modelling from Mark Turiansky (NRL). Lead authors Moein Kazemi & Mehdi Keshavarz pictured in our lab at @sfuphysics.bsky.social.

journals.aps.org/prl/abstract...

New paper out now in PRB! We discuss protecting T centre qubits during entanglement attempts. journals.aps.org/prb/abstract...

Beautiful work by PhD student Nick Brunelle and SQT alumnus Joshua Kanaganyagam with collab by Geoffroy Hautier's team at Rice University and @photonicinc.bsky.social.

Just in time for the holidays! arxiv.org/abs/2512.16047

Our PhD student Nicholas Brunelle measures the hyperfine coupling between the silicon T centre electron “communication” qubit and its H nuclear “memory” qubit—unlocking an unusual protection scheme against optically induced decoherence.

Yes! At least for other C-H silicon colour centres. We have observed the same effect for the silicon I and M centres (keep an eye out for the upcoming paper).

Giant Isotope Effect on the Excited-State Lifetime and Emission Efficiency of the Silicon T Centre Efficient single-photon emitters are desirable for quantum technologies including quantum networks and photonic quantum computers. We investigate the T centre, a telecommunications-band emitter in sil...

Surprising result! Our team found 5x longer deuterated T centre lifetimes. Heavier mass lowers C–H stretch energy, suppressing phononic decay. Near-perfect emission efficiency, unheard of for silicon colour centres, means better quantum light sources and quantum repeaters! arxiv.org/abs/2510.23862

Delighted to see this News and Views article on our recent manuscript. Great perspective from Benjamin Pingault. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

You can read more about this work in a blog post by lead author Camille Bowness written for our industry partner Photonic Inc. photonic.com/blog/the-t-c...

@photonicinc.bsky.social @sfuphysics.bsky.social

In our new PRX Quantum paper, PhD student Camille Bowness & postdoc Simon Meynell study spectral wandering of single colour centres in silicon nanocavities. We show wandering is mainly laser-induced, and narrow the effective excitation linewidth using a resonance-check scheme. go.aps.org/3IjO63h

Canada had – and lost – its lead in AI. Can it avoid making the same mistake in the next emerging global technology race? Canada is positioned to benefit economically from quantum computing, but can it keep up with other countries pouring billions into their own industries?

"Quantum leap
Canada had – and lost – its lead in AI. Can it avoid making the same mistake in the next emerging global technology race?" 🎁🔗

www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/54582f8...

Electrically triggered spin–photon devices in silicon Nature Photonics - Two types of on-chip silicon device utilizing silicon T centres are developed: an O-band light-emitting diode and an electrically triggered single-photon source. Further, a new...

Excited to share our new paper by PhD student Michael Dobinson in Nature Photonics: rdcu.be/eFFQf

We show single-photon emission + spin initialization by electrical injection in cavity-enhanced, single-defect silicon diodes. Much more to come on these devices!

#SFU #QuantumTech

This Saturday, to celebrate the International Year of Quantum, we're opening our labs to tours and I'll be speaking about our work at SFU building the quantum internet. Come join us and see a quantum physics lab in action.

Quantum Canada Open Doors 2025 - everybody is invited!

Come join us @sfuphysics.bsky.social #SFU on Burnaby Mountain this Saturday May 3rd for our Quantum Canada Open Doors 2025 event. There will be talks about our quantum research, hands-on activities and lab tours. #YVR 🧪 ⚛️ 🎢 🇨🇦

Lead the Way: Graduate Studies at SFU in Canada for Fall 2025 & Spring 2026 Select SFU graduate programs are opening their applications particularly for Canadian students choosing to remain and study in Canada as well as US students looking to study outside the US. Applicatio...

Applications are open for select graduate studies programs at #SFU, including biomedical physiology, chemistry, molecular biology and @sfuphysics.bsky.social. Canadian and US students encouraged to apply by April 25. www.sfu.ca/gradstudies/...

Laser-induced spectral diffusion and excited-state mixing of silicon T centres To find practical application as photon sources for entangled optical resource states or as spin-photon interfaces in entangled networks, semiconductor emitters must produce indistinguishable photons ...

Very excited to share a new preprint by my PhD student Camille Bowness and postdoc Simon Meynell: arxiv.org/abs/2504.09908

The spectral fluctuations of integrated T centres are primarily laser-driven, and resonance checks can significantly increase entanglement rates in T centre quantum networks.

The Silicon Quantum Technology lab has arrived for the American Physical SocietyGlobal Physics Summit 2025 (#APSSummit25)! Look out for talks by our students Austin Woolverton and Michael Dobinson and postdoc Simon Meynell to get all the latest updates on silicon colour centre quantum technologies.

Congratulations! It's a beautiful experiment.

Check out our new preprint by PhD student Michael Dobinson! We demonstrate the first electrically-injected single-photon source with silicon colour centres and opto-electrically prepare a spin qubit. arxiv.org/abs/2501.10597
Big thanks to the SQT team and our industry partners Photonic Inc.