Quantifying the Effects of Sample Treatments on Quantum Emitters in Hexagonal Boron Nitride

Hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) has emerged as a leading two-dimensional van der Waals material for next-generation quantum technologies. In particular, recent studies have identified spin-dependent quantum emission from defect states within the bandgap of hBN, making it a promising platform for quantum information processing and sensing applications. These optical-frequency emitters are among the brightest known, but they display heterogenous properties and are poorly understood at the microscopic level. Confounding this, samples have undergone a variety of treatments in reported experiments - the two most common treatments being low-energy (keV) electron-beam irradiation and high-temperature (850C) annealing in inert gas - with only a qualitative understanding of their effects. Here we systematically and quantitatively study the effect of these treatments using an analytical model which relates pixel intensity distributions from large-area confocal photoluminescence images to the density and brightness distributions of emitter ensembles. The results inform future efforts to control the formation and stabilization of quantum emitters in hBN.