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arXiv:2208.01377 · Photonics Research

Aluminum nitride waveguide beam splitters for integrated quantum photonic circuits

Hyeong‐Soon Jang, Donghwa Lee, Hyungjun Heo, Yong‐Su Kim, Hyang‐Tag Lim, Seungwoo Jeon, Sung Moon, Sangin Kim, Sang-Wook Han, Hojoong Jung

Published May 9, 2023• 11 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We demonstrate integrated photonic circuits for quantum devices using sputtered polycrystalline aluminum nitride (AlN) on insulator. On-chip AlN waveguide directional couplers, which are one of the most important components in quantum photonics, are fabricated and show the output power splitting ratios from 50:50 to 99:1. Polarization beam splitters with an extinction ratio of more than 10 dB are also realized from the AlN directional couplers. Using the fabricated AlN waveguide beam splitters, we observe Hong–Ou–Mandel interference with a visibility of 91.7 % ±5.66 % .

DOI
10.1364/prj.461723

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We demonstrate integrated photonic circuits for quantum devices using sputtered polycrystalline aluminum nitride (AlN) on insulator. On-chip AlN waveguide directional couplers, which are one of the most important components in quantum photonics, are fabricated and show the output power splitting ratios from 50:50 to 99:1. Polarization beam splitters with an extinction ratio of more than 10 dB are also realized from the AlN directional couplers. Using the fabricated AlN waveguide beam splitters, we observe Hong–Ou–Mandel interference with a visibility of 91.7 % ±5.66 % .
Integrated silicon nitride photonics has emerged as a key enabling technology for quantum technologies. Among the essential devices, beam splitters in the form of integrated directional couplers are widely used in circuits such as Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) interferometry. However, the wavelength-dependent nature of these couplers limits their use in experiments involving broadband photons. In this work, we experimentally demonstrate a wavelength-flattened directional coupler on the silicon nitride platform, exhibiting a nearly wavelength-flattened splitting ratio over the measured telecom wavelength range. This integrated photonic circuit is compatible with broadband quantum photonic circuits, including HOM interferometry, and supports the development of integrated single- and photon-pair sources.
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We fabricated various optical devices on a hybrid Si3N4–LiNbO3platform for integrated quantum photonic circuits and observed Hong–Ou–Mandel (HOM) quantum interference. Strip-loaded waveguides were prepared via Si3N4deposition on LiNbO3. Consequently, fundamental building blocks for quantum photonics, such as ring resonators, various beam splitters, and Mach–Zehnder interferometers, were fabricated and tested. Using 50:50 beam splitters, we observed HOM quantum interference and achieved a visibility of 96.6 ± 1.2% after the subtraction of accidental counts. More advanced quantum-integrated devices are expected to be realized using the proposed hybrid platform.
Integrated quantum photonics is a key tool towards large scale quantum technologies. In this work we present an AlGaAs-based photonic circuit for on-chip generation and manipulation of broadband polarization-entangled photon pairs. The quantum state is generated by Type-II spontaneous parametric down conversion in AlGaAs Bragg reflection waveguides at telecom wavelengths and room temperature. Polarization entangled photons are manipulated over a frequency band of around 50 nm by an integrated polarizing beam splitter. We demonstrate Hong-Ou-Mandel visibility of 80% for a quantum device where the photon pairs generation and manipulation are implemented in a single chip.
The generation of pure single-photon states and their characterization are fundamental in quantum information processing applications like quantum computing. In this work, we design integrated optical directional couplers on a silicon nitride platform for heralded single-photon characterization. We assume the generation of such photons in silicon nitride waveguides through the spontaneous four-wave mixing process. We show that manipulating the waveguide geometry and dielectric contrast makes it possible to obtain nearly wavelength-independent directional coupler designs that perform as 50:50 beamsplitters over a broad bandwidth around the central design wavelength. Assuming two independent but identical heralded single-photon sources, we compare the visibility obtained by simulating the Hong-Ou-Mandel interference for three different 50:50 beamsplitters: an ideal one (perfectly wavelength-independent), an engineered one (nearly wavelength-independent), and an unengineered one (significantly wavelength-dependent). The purity obtained with the engineered beamsplitter closely matches the purity obtained with the ideal one, for which the interference visibility is a direct measure of the quantum state purity. This finding implies that the proposed engineered beamsplitter is suitable for characterizing heralded single-photon states, provided its bandwidth is 23 nm.
Interference between single photons is key for many quantum optics experiments and applications in quantum technologies, such as quantum communication or computation. It is advantageous to operate the systems at telecommunication wavelengths and to integrate the setups for these applications in order to improve stability, compactness and scalability. A new promising material platform for integrated quantum optics is lithium niobate on insulator (LNOI). Here, we realise Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) interference between telecom photons from an engineered parametric down-conversion source in an LNOI directional coupler. The coupler has been designed and fabricated in house and provides close to perfect balanced beam splitting. We obtain a raw HOM visibility of (93.5 ± 0.7) %, limited mainly by the source performance and in good agreement with off-chip measurements. This lays the foundation for more sophisticated quantum experiments in LNOI.