Abstract Entanglement is a counterintuitive feature of quantum physics that is at the heart of quantum technology. High-dimensional quantum states offer unique advantages in various quantum information tasks. Integrated photonic chips have recently emerged as a leading platform for the generation, manipulation and detection of entangled photons. Here, we report a silicon photonic chip that uses interferometric resonance-enhanced photon-pair sources, spectral demultiplexers and high-dimensional reconfigurable circuitries to generate, manipulate and analyse path-entangled three-dimensional qutrit states. By minimizing on-chip electrical and thermal cross-talk, we obtain high-quality quantum interference with visibilities above 96.5% and a maximally entangled-qutrit state with a fidelity of 95.5%. We further explore the fundamental properties of entangled qutrits to test quantum nonlocality and contextuality, and to implement quantum simulations of graphs and high-precision optical phase measurements. Our work paves the path for the development of multiphoton high-dimensional quantum technologies.
Abstract Entanglement is a counterintuitive feature of quantum physics that is at the heart of quantum technology. High-dimensional quantum states offer unique advantages in various quantum information tasks. Integrated photonic chips have recently emerged as a leading platform for the generation, manipulation and detection of entangled photons. Here, we report a silicon photonic chip that uses interferometric resonance-enhanced photon-pair sources, spectral demultiplexers and high-dimensional reconfigurable circuitries to generate, manipulate and analyse path-entangled three-dimensional qutrit states. By minimizing on-chip electrical and thermal cross-talk, we obtain high-quality quantum interference with visibilities above 96.5% and a maximally entangled-qutrit state with a fidelity of 95.5%. We further explore the fundamental properties of entangled qutrits to test quantum nonlocality and contextuality, and to implement quantum simulations of graphs and high-precision optical phase measurements. Our work paves the path for the development of multiphoton high-dimensional quantum technologies.
Entanglement--one of the most delicate phenomena in nature--is an essential resource for quantum information applications. Scalable photonic quantum devices must generate and control qubit entanglement on-chip, where quantum information is naturally encoded in photon path. Here we report a silicon photonic chip that uses resonant-enhanced photon-pair sources, spectral demultiplexers and reconfigurable optics to generate a path-entangled two-qubit state and analyse its entanglement. We show that ring-resonator-based spontaneous four-wave mixing photon-pair sources can be made highly indistinguishable and that their spectral correlations are small. We use on-chip frequency demultiplexers and reconfigurable optics to perform both quantum state tomography and the strict Bell-CHSH test, both of which confirm a high level of on-chip entanglement. This work demonstrates the integration of high-performance components that will be essential for building quantum devices and systems to harness photonic entanglement on the large scale.
Silicon quantum photonics promises to take quantum optics to the large scale, where single photons carry the quantum information which can accelerate difficult computational problems, provide perfectly secure communication, or allow high-accuracy measurements. The silicon photonics platform offers miniature, high-yield, and high-performance photonics which are integrable with CMOS electronics and telecommunications-band optics. To date, only non-scalable photon-pair sources, based on spontaneous four-wave mixing (SFWM) in straight silicon waveguides have been shown to interfere [1]. Until now, single-photon experiments in silicon [2] have exclusively used an off-chip apparatus, such as a silica arrayed waveguide grating, to control and manipulate photon frequency. We present a silicon-on-insulator quantum photonic device (Fig. 1a) able to generate and analyse two maximally entangled qubits. We use this device to demonstrate high-visibility quantum interferencebetween resonant SFWM sources (analogous to [1]), phase-stable frequency-selection, and quantum state tomography. We varied the phase  to obtain the fringes shown in Fig. 1b, with a visibility of 96.8%. This high visibility indicates that the two microring sources are substantially identical. We setup the entangled state via the on-chip 17-dB extinction filters, and used quantum state tomography to analyse it (Fig. 1c). We measured a fidelity of 0.8. This is the first time an entangled state of photonic qubits has been both generated and analysed on-chip, and this generation has been done in a way which is scalable to larger photon number. These results represent a new step towards fully silicon-integrated quantum photonics.
This work reports recent progress in developing silicon photonic circuits for on-chip generation and manipulation of entangled photon pairs. We successfully integrated three essential functions— photon-pair source, pump filtering, and demultiplexing—into a single silicon chip. Key performance results include a high-quality resonator (Q-factor > 100,000), pump rejection over 80 dB, and efficient signal-idler separation with minimal crosstalk (better than 40 dB). These advancements pave the way for high-brightness photon-pair generation and manipulation, beneficial for quantum applications.
Abstract High-dimensional quantum entanglement is an important resource for emerging quantum technologies such as quantum communication and quantum computation. The scalability of metres-long experimental setups limits high-dimensional entanglement in bulk optics. Advancements in quantum technology hinge on reproducible, and reconfigurable quantum devices—including photon sources, which are challenging to achieve in a scalable manner using bulk optics. Advances in nanotechnology and CMOS-compatible integration techniques have enabled the generation of entangled photons on millimeter-scale chips, significantly enhancing scalability, stability, replicability, and miniaturization for real-world quantum applications. In recent years we have seen several chip-scale demonstrations with different discrete degrees of freedom including path, frequency-bin, time-bin, and transverse modes, on many material platforms. A complete quantum photonic integrated circuit requires the generation, manipulation, and detection of quantum states, involving various active and passive quantum photonic components which further increase the degree of complexity. Here, we focus on the high-dimensional versions of qubits—qudits—and review the nonlinear optical processes that facilitate on-chip high-dimensional entangled photon sources, and the currently used material platforms. We discuss a range of current implementations of on-chip high-dimensional entangled photon sources and demonstrated applications. We comment on the current challenges due to the limitations of individual material platforms and present future opportunities in hybrid and heterogeneous integration strategies for the next generation of integrated quantum photonic chips.
Recently there has been a worldwide effort to produce scalable qubit implementations for quantum information protocols, including quantum key distribution, quantum metrology and quantum computing---technologies which have the power to revolutionise their respective fields. Silicon photonics is in a prime position to provide the physical, photonic implementations of these technologies due to it's high-yield, high-performance and inherently scalable CMOS manufacturing infrastructure. The on-chip production of more than one uncorrelated photon pair (more than two photons) has remained a technological challenge. Here, we seek to overcome this using careful quantum photonic design, and state-of-the-art Silicon photonics technology. Our four-photon device expands the capabilities of integrated quantum photonics to fully entangled four photons, specifically the four photon graph states. In the graph state formalism, each vertex corresponds to a qubit, and each edge corresponds to a controlled-phase gate (an entangling operation) performed between the qubits it links. It has been shown that these states are very powerful---simple measurement strategies on certain graph states provide universal quantum computing. Interestingly, certain classes of graph states are equivalent under single-qubit transformations. These are the global entanglement classes. Our device uses both a reconfigurable entangling gate and local transformations to fully explore the space of 4 qubit graph states. The device employs four ring resonator sources, on-chip spectral demultiplexing, a reconfigurable entangling gate, and single-qubit transformations for each qubit. Using these capabilities, we can verify our entangled quantum states using entanglement witnesses, local tomography, and by running toy measurement-based quantum computations. These devices will be both the largest and most diverse integrated photonic quantum state generators produced to date. A vital demonstration of this work is high-quality quantum interference between spontaneous four-wave mixing photon-pair sources on the same chip. These ideas and proof-of-concept demonstrations point to large scale quantum technology, built using today's technologies.
Abstract High-dimensional entanglement is significant for the fundamental studies of quantum physics and offers unique advantages in various quantum information processing tasks. Integrated quantum devices have recently emerged as a promising platform for creating, processing, and detecting complex high-dimensional entangled states. A crucial step toward practical quantum technologies is to verify that these devices work reliably with an optimal strategy. In this work, we experimentally implement an optimal quantum verification strategy on a three-dimensional maximally entangled state using local projective measurements on a silicon photonic chip. A 95% confidence is achieved from 1190 copies to verify the target quantum state. The obtained scaling of infidelity as a function of the number of copies is −0.5497 ± 0.0002, exceeding the standard quantum limit of −0.5 with 248 standard deviations. Our results indicate that quantum state verification could serve as an efficient tool for complex quantum measurement tasks.