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Photon Pairs from a Silicon Photonic Chip

Ranjeet Kumar

Published Jan 1, 2016• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Photon pair sources with the capability to tune the wavelength and correlation properties of the generated photons can be useful for quantum applications such as communication, sensing, and computing. Silicon devices based on the SOI (silicon-on-insulator) platform benefits from both tight modal confinement, due to high index contrast between core and cladding, and CMOS compatible manufacturing process, making it a suitable platform for such sources. In the present work, we discuss the possibility of using planar resonant silicon devices with bend radii of a few tens of microns as photon pair sources. We discuss that a silicon nanophotonic chip consisting of either a single microring or coupled microrings can be used to generate photon pairs around 1.55 um. We discuss that the photons are generated in multiple pairs of wavelengths and can be tuned over several nanometers, demonstrating the capability to generate wavelength division multiplexed photon pairs at freely chosen telecommunication-band wavelengths. Further on, we discuss the ease of control over the bi-photon spectrum of the generated photon pairs and its implication in controlling their correlation properties. Uncorrelated photon pairs can be used to herald a single photon, and correlated photon pairs can be used in various quantum applications such as communication and sensing. In the end, we discuss the design parameters of a single microring resonator based sources.

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Photon pair sources with the capability to tune the wavelength and correlation properties of the generated photons can be useful for quantum applications such as communication, sensing, and computing. Silicon devices based on the SOI (silicon-on-insulator) platform benefits from both tight modal confinement, due to high index contrast between core and cladding, and CMOS compatible manufacturing process, making it a suitable platform for such sources. In the present work, we discuss the possibility of using planar resonant silicon devices with bend radii of a few tens of microns as photon pair sources. We discuss that a silicon nanophotonic chip consisting of either a single microring or coupled microrings can be used to generate photon pairs around 1.55 um. We discuss that the photons are generated in multiple pairs of wavelengths and can be tuned over several nanometers, demonstrating the capability to generate wavelength division multiplexed photon pairs at freely chosen telecommunication-band wavelengths. Further on, we discuss the ease of control over the bi-photon spectrum of the generated photon pairs and its implication in controlling their correlation properties. Uncorrelated photon pairs can be used to herald a single photon, and correlated photon pairs can be used in various quantum applications such as communication and sensing. In the end, we discuss the design parameters of a single microring resonator based sources.
Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) based on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrates provide a lightweight, compact platform for applications in quantum optics. We show the evaluation and characterization of an SOI-bascd PIC design for an entangled photon pair source, generating photon pairs by means of the nonlinear process of spontaneous four-wave mixing in microring resonators. Experimental results following from the chip fabrication fed back into the simulated parameter tuning effects, culminating in photon pair generation with measured correlations exceeding classically predicted limits.
Integrated quantum photonics relies critically on the purity, scalability, integrability, and flexibility of a photon source to support diverse quantum functionalities on a single chip. Here we report a chip-scale photon-pair source on the silicon-on-insulator platform that utilizes dramatic cavity-enhanced four-wave mixing in a high-Q silicon microdisk resonator. The device is able to produce high-quality photon pairs at different wavelengths with a high spectral brightness of 6.24×10(7) pairs/s/mW(2)/GHz and photon-pair correlation with a coincidence-to-accidental ratio of 1386 ± 278 while pumped with a continuous-wave laser. The superior performance, together with the structural compactness and CMOS compatibility, opens up a great avenue towards quantum silicon photonics with capability of multi-channel parallel information processing for both integrated quantum computing and long-haul quantum communication.
Directly modulated semiconductor lasers are widely used, compact light sources in optical communications. Semiconductors can also be used to generate nonclassical light; in fact, CMOS-compatible silicon chips can be used to generate pairs of single photons at room temperature. Unlike the classical laser, the photon-pair source requires control over a two-dimensional joint spectral intensity (JSI) and it is not possible to process the photons separately, as this could destroy the entanglement. Here we design a photon-pair source, consisting of planar lightwave components fabricated using CMOS-compatible lithography in silicon, which has the capability to vary the JSI. By controlling either the optical pump wavelength, or the temperature of the chip, we demonstrate the ability to select different JSIs, with a large variation in the Schmidt number. Such control can benefit high-dimensional communications where detector-timing constraints can be relaxed by realizing a large Schmidt number in a small frequency range.
Hybrid photonic circuits, harnessing the complementary strengths of multiple materials, represent a key resource to enable compact, scalable platforms for quantum technologies. In particular, the availability of bright sources of tunable biphoton states is eagerly awaited to meet the variety of applications currently under development. In this work we demonstrate a heterogeneously integrated device that merges biphoton generation and on-chip quantum state engineering, combining an AlGaAs photon-pair source with a CMOS-compatible silicon-on-insulator (SOI) circuit. Photon pairs are generated in the C telecom band via spontaneous parametric down-conversion and transferred to the SOI chip through a multimode evanescent coupling scheme. This design achieves a pair generation rate above 106^{6}6 s−1^{-1}−1mW−1^{-1}−1 and a coincidence-to-accidental ratio up to 600. Crucially, the coupling design induces strong and predictable transformations of the biphoton joint spectral amplitude, enabling complex quantum state engineering entirely on-chip in a compact device compliant with electrical pumping.