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arXiv:2112.09961 · Light Science & Applications

Spectral control of nonclassical light pulses using an integrated thin-film lithium niobate modulator

Di Zhu, Changchen Chen, Mengjie Yu, Linbo Shao, Yaowen Hu, C. J. Xin, Matthew Yeh, Soumya Shankar Ghosh, Lingyan He, Christian Reimer, Neil E. Sinclair, Franco N. C. Wong, Mian Zhang, Marko Lončar

Published Nov 17, 2022• 85 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Manipulating the frequency and bandwidth of nonclassical light is essential for implementing frequency-encoded/multiplexed quantum computation, communication, and networking protocols, and for bridging spectral mismatch among various quantum systems. However, quantum spectral control requires a strong nonlinearity mediated by light, microwave, or acoustics, which is challenging to realize with high efficiency, low noise, and on an integrated chip. Here, we demonstrate both frequency shifting and bandwidth compression of heralded single-photon pulses using an integrated thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) phase modulator. We achieve record-high electro-optic frequency shearing of telecom single photons over terahertz range (±641 GHz or ±5.2 nm), enabling high visibility quantum interference between frequency-nondegenerate photon pairs. We further operate the modulator as a time lens and demonstrate over eighteen-fold (6.55 nm to 0.35 nm) bandwidth compression of single photons. Our results showcase the viability and promise of on-chip quantum spectral control for scalable photonic quantum information processing.

DOI
10.1038/s41377-022-01029-7

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Manipulating the frequency and bandwidth of nonclassical light is essential for implementing frequency-encoded/multiplexed quantum computation, communication, and networking protocols, and for bridging spectral mismatch among various quantum systems. However, quantum spectral control requires a strong nonlinearity mediated by light, microwave, or acoustics, which is challenging to realize with high efficiency, low noise, and on an integrated chip. Here, we demonstrate both frequency shifting and bandwidth compression of heralded single-photon pulses using an integrated thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) phase modulator. We achieve record-high electro-optic frequency shearing of telecom single photons over terahertz range (±641 GHz or ±5.2 nm), enabling high visibility quantum interference between frequency-nondegenerate photon pairs. We further operate the modulator as a time lens and demonstrate over eighteen-fold (6.55 nm to 0.35 nm) bandwidth compression of single photons. Our results showcase the viability and promise of on-chip quantum spectral control for scalable photonic quantum information processing.
Abstract Manipulating the frequency and bandwidth of nonclassical light is essential for implementing frequency-encoded/multiplexed quantum computation, communication, and networking protocols, and for bridging spectral mismatch among various quantum systems. However, quantum spectral control requires a strong nonlinearity mediated by light, microwave, or acoustics, which is challenging to realize with high efficiency, low noise, and on an integrated chip. Here, we demonstrate both frequency shifting and bandwidth compression of nonclassical light using an integrated thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) phase modulator. We achieve record-high electro-optic frequency shearing of telecom single photons over terahertz range (± 641 GHz or ± 5.2 nm), enabling high visibility quantum interference between frequency-nondegenerate photon pairs. We further operate the modulator as a time lens and demonstrate over eighteen-fold (6.55 nm to 0.35 nm) bandwidth compression of single photons. Our results showcase the viability and promise of on-chip quantum spectral control for scalable photonic quantum information processing.
Within the last decade, thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) has emerged as a leading integrated photonics platform with immediate applications in classical communications. Concurrently, TFLN components tailored to the requirements of photonic quantum information processing have also garnered considerable interest. Chief among these is the quasi-phase matched (QPM) nonlinear frequency mixer—implemented via periodic domain inversion in ferroelectric lithium niobate—which can be used to generate photon pairs, squeezed states of light, and to perform single photon frequency conversion. Here, we demonstrate progress towards realizing a spectrally separable photon pair source in lithium niobate via waveguide dispersion engineering—a technique uniquely enabled by sub-wavelength optical mode confinement in the thin-film platform. Subsequently, we design optimize a scalable fabrication process to produce QPM TFLN devices for applications that require strict adherence to a specified operating wavelength, such as quantum frequency conversion in a quantum communications network. Finally, we explore how high-performance electro-optic devices can be combined with these nonlinear optical devices to realize a multi-functional platform in which quantum states of light can be generated and manipulated within a single, compact photonic integrated circuit.
Spectral-temporal manipulation of optical pulses has enabled numerous developments within a broad range of research topics, ranging from fundamental science to practical applications. Within quantum optics spectral-temporal degree of freedom of light offers a promising platform for integrated photonic quantum information processing. An important challenge in experimentally realizing spectral-temporal manipulation of quantum states of light is the need for highly efficient manipulation tools. In this context the intrinsically deterministic electro-optic methods show great promise for quantum applications. We experimentally demonstrate application of electro-optic platform for spectral-temporal manipulation of ultrashort pulsed quantum light. Using techniques analogous to serrodyne frequency shifting we show active spectral translation of few-picosecond single photon pulses by up to 0.5 THz. By employing an approach based on an electro-optic time lens we demonstrate up to 6-fold spectral compression of heralded single photon pulses with efficiency that enables us to significantly increase single photon flux through a narrow bandpass filter. We realize the required temporal phase manipulation by driving a lithium niobate waveguided electrooptic modulator with 33 dBm sinusoidal RF field at the frequency of either 10 GHz or 40 GHz. We use a phase lock loop to temporally lock the RF field to the 80 MHz repetition rate of approximately 1 ps long optical pulses. Heralded single photon wavepackets are generated by means of spontaneous parametric down-conversion in potassium dihydrogen phosphate (KDP) crystal, which enables preparation of spectrally pure single photon wavepackets without the need for spectral filtering. Spectral shifting is achieved by locking single-photon pulses to the linear slope of sinusoidal 40 GHz RF phase modulation. We verify the spectral shift by performing spectrally resolved heralded single photon counting, using frequency-to-time conversion by means of a highly dispersive chirped fiber Bragg grating. We verify the non-classicality of spectrally shifted single photons by measuring high-visibility Hong-Ou-Mandel interference using a reference single photon pulse. Spectral compression is based on the time lens principle, which requires locking optical pulses to approximately quadratic region of sinusoidal phase modulation. We utilize both 10 GHz and 40 GHz RF driving frequencies. Bandwidth compression is achieved by chirping the single photon pulse using an appropriate length of single-mode fibre and subsequently subjecting it to the action of the time lens. We verify spectral compression directly using the aforementioned spectrally-resolved heralded single photon counting method. We achieve 3-fold spectral compression of 2 nm bandwidth single photon pulses using 40 GHZ modulation frequency, and 6-fold spectral compression of 0.9 nm bandwidth single photon pulses using 10 GHz modulation frequency. Overall transmission of our set-up exceeding 30% enables practical usability of our spectral compression method which we demonstrate experimentally by showing an increased photon flux through a narrowband filter. Our results present an important contribution towards implementing quantum information processing in the spectral-temporal degree of freedom of a photon. In the context of quantum networks they present an enabling tool towards efficient photonic interfacing of different quantum information processing platforms.
Practical quantum networks will require multi-qubit quantum nodes. This in turn will increase the complexity of the photonic circuits needed to control each qubit and require strategies to multiplex memories. Integrated photonics operating at visible to near-infrared (VNIR) wavelength range can provide solutions to these needs. In this work, we realize a VNIR thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) integrated photonics platform with the key components to meet these requirements, including low-loss couplers (<1 dB/facet), switches (>20 dB extinction), and high-bandwidth electro-optic modulators (>50 GHz). With these devices, we demonstrate high-efficiency and CW-compatible frequency shifting (>50% efficiency at 15 GHz), as well as simultaneous laser amplitude and frequency control. Finally, we highlight an architecture for multiplexing quantum memories and outline how this platform can enable a 2-order of magnitude improvement in entanglement rates over single memory nodes. Our results demonstrate that TFLN can meet the necessary performance and scalability benchmarks to enable large-scale quantum nodes.
Efficient single-photon generation remains a big challenge in quantum photonics. A promising approach to overcome this challenge is to employ active multiplexing—repeating a nondeterministic photon pair generation process across orthogonal degrees of freedom and exploiting heralding to actively route the heralded photon to the desired single output mode via feedforward. The main barriers of multiplexing schemes, however, are minimizing resource requirements to allow scalability and the lack of availability of high-speed, low-loss switches. Here, we present an on-chip temporal multiplexing scheme utilizing thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) photonics to effectively address these challenges. Our time-multiplexed source, operating at a rate of 62.2 MHz, enhances single-photon probability by a factor of 3.37 ± 0.05 without introducing additional multi-photon noise. This demonstration highlights the feasibility and potential of TFLN photonics for large-scale complex quantum information technologies.