High-Performance Imaging in a Dilution Refrigerator

Nanophotonic light-matter interfaces hold great promise for quantum technologies. Enhancing local electromagnetic fields, they enable highly efficient detectors, can help realize optically connected processors, or serve as quantum repeaters. In-situ fiber-coupling at sub-Kelvin temperatures, as required for test and development of new devices, proves challenging as suitable cryogenic microscopes are not readily available. Here, we report on a robust and versatile confocal imaging system integrated in a dilution refrigerator, enabling high-resolution visualization of nanophotonic structures on a transparent diamond substrate. Our imaging system achieves a resolution of 1.1 μm and a field-of-view of 2.5 mm. The system requires no movable parts at cryogenic temperatures and features a large working distance, thereby allowing optical and microwave probe access, as well as direct anchoring of temperature sensitive samples to a cold finger, needed for applications with high thermal load. This system will facilitate the development of scalable, integrated quantum optics technology, as required for research on large scale quantum networks.