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Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics Europe & European Quantum Electronics Conference (CLEO/Europe-EQEC)

A reconfigurable modular system for on-chip quantum optics

Paolo L. Mennea, William R. Clements, Matthew T. Posner, Rex H. S. Bannerman, Devin H. Smith, Jelmer J. Renema, James C. Gates, W. Steven Kolthammer, Ian A. Walmsley, Peter G. R. Smith

Published Jun 1, 2017• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Quantum optics experiments are increasingly taking an integrated format for the benefits of phase stability and scalability. Silica has proved an advantageous material for this work due to its low propagation loss and high-efficiency coupling to optical fibre, and a number of key on-chip experiments have already been carried out with up to four photons using this material [1]. Fabrication imperfections create a number of difficulties in moving to more complex setups since the classical performance of the network must be characterised before an analysis of its quantum properties can be carried out, and this process becomes greatly more challenging as the circuit complexity grows.

DOI
10.1109/cleoe-eqec.2017.8087430

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•Jan 1, 2014•0 citations
Quantum optics experiments are increasingly taking an integrated format for the benefits of phase stability and scalability. Silica has proved an advantageous material for this work due to its low propagation loss and high-efficiency coupling to optical fibre, and a number of key on-chip experiments have already been carried out with up to four photons using this material [1]. Fabrication imperfections create a number of difficulties in moving to more complex setups since the classical performance of the network must be characterised before an analysis of its quantum properties can be carried out, and this process becomes greatly more challenging as the circuit complexity grows.
Single photon sources are a key building block for quantum information processing. A common approach uses spontaneous emitters based on parametric down conversion and four wave mixing. In 2005 experiments on the first spectrally engineered four wave mixing sources in fibre were published [1,2]. A primary obstacle for photonics to realize quantum-enhanced applications is loss. Designing single photon sources matched to single mode optical fibres greatly reduces coupling losses [3]. In addition, tailoring the phase matching properties of the sources to generate factorable photon pairs makes strong spectral filtering obsolete and thereby avoids the degradation of photon number correlations due to loss.
For over a decade the field of quantum photonics has increasingly looked towards optical integrated platforms to perform more complex and sophisticated experiments. Silica integrated optics is an ideal material for this area, offering low propagation and fibre-coupling losses. To date many of the key on-chip experiments have been carried out in this platform, using bespoke monolithic devices. In this work we propose an alternative approach, implementing a linear network constructed from a number of identical reconfigurable modules. The modules are measured separately to produce an accurate model of the overall network. The cellular nature also allows the replacement of modules that are faulty or substandard. Each module comprises of an array of 10 Mach-Zhender interferometers. Forty thermo-optic phase shifters on each chip allows the control of both the amplitude and phase of the optical field within the devices. By cascading the modules any arbitrary NxN unitary network can be realised. The optical waveguides within the modules are fabricated by direct UV writing, where a scanning focused UV laser beam increases the local refractive index within a photosensitive germanosilicate glass layer. The resulting channel waveguides are engineered to have dimensions that are mode matched to standard optical fibre producing excellent coupling efficiency. Bragg gratings can also be simultaneously produced within the waveguides which greatly assists in the precise characterisation of the phase shifters, coupling ratios and optical losses within the modules. We will present our recent work in this area, demonstrating devices operating at telecom wavelengths for quantum information processing. We present a modular reconfigurable system for on-chip quantum optics experiments with excellent fibre compatibility and low propagation losses, implemented using direct-UV-written silica-on-silicon. The performance of fabricated devices in various configurations is reported.
Direct UV-written silica-on-silicon provides an attractive platform for quantum optics, offering the key benefits of low propagation losses and excellent optical fibre compatibility. This work has aimed to develop the necessary techniques and components for completely integrated quantum optics experiments to be carried out using this platform, on a larger scale than previously possible. Arrays of matched on-chip photon sources based on birefringence-matched spontaneous four-wave mixing (FWM) are demonstrated, both at 800 nm and in the telecommunications C-band, along with progress towards further integration of these sources. Thermo-optic phase shifters, for use in room temperature quantum circuits, have been optimised via modelling, and a range of alternative modulator technologies have been explored. Further work has been concerned with the development of a modular system for quantum optics, comprising a set of duplicate reconfigurable modules and the necessary drive electronics and software, with the intent of simplifying the task of identifying and quantifying manufacturing imperfections in large integrated experiments. Efforts have also been made to improve the detection efficiency of on-chip transition edge sensor (TES) single photon detectors, including the use of longer absorbers and high reflectors for multiple absorption passes; this has resulted in the demonstration of a photon-number-resolving detector with a Bragg grating enhanced quantum efficiency of 87%. Approaches for further increasing the detection efficiency are considered and a device for on-chip Hong-Ou-Mandel and photon subtraction experiments using these detectors is reported.
Building complex quantum systems has the potential to reveal phenomena that cannot be studied using classical simulation. Photonics has proven to be an effective test-bed for the investigation of such quantum-enhanced technologies, however, the proliferation of bulk optical components is unlikely to be a scalable route towards building more complex devices. Instead, the miniaturisation, inherent phase stability and trivial alignment afforded by integrated photonic systems has been shown to be a promising alternative. In the first half of this thesis, we describe experiments exploiting the quantum interference of three single photons on a reconfigurable integrated photonic chip. We develop a low-loss source of single photons and introduce a low-loss silica-on-silicon waveguide architecture which enables us to show the first genuine quantum interference of three single photons on an integrated platform. A loss-tolerant, element-wise characterisation scheme is developed along with a statistical test to verify that this multi-photon circuit behaves as expected. We then make use of this three-photon interference to detail the first proof-of-principle demonstration of a new intermediate model of quantum computation called boson sampling. Finally, we perform an on-chip demonstration of the quantum teleportation protocol where all key parts --- entanglement preparation, Bell-state analysis and quantum state tomography --- are performed on a reconfigurable photonic chip. The element-wise characterisation scheme developed earlier is shown to be critical to mitigate fabricated component errors. We develop a theoretical model to account for all sources of possible error in the circuit and find good agreement with the measured teleported state fidelities, which exceed the average teleportation fidelity possible with a classical device. We identify the elements of this error budget relevant to scaling and propose improvements to chip characterisation and fabrication in order to achieve high fidelity operation. In the second half, we discuss the use of high efficiency superconducting transition edge sensors in enabling quantum experiments using more photons. We detail the installation and characterisation of these detectors in a new lab in Oxford. We achieve good photon number-resolution and high-efficiency operation. Work to integrate these detectors on the silica-on-silicon waveguide architecture is discussed and we detail the optical and thermal device modelling performed to optimise the on-chip detection efficiency. New, on-chip detectors, fabricated according to this design are shown to operate as expected and achieve high-efficiency and good energy resolution.