Novel research-inspired outreach activities allow scientists and members of the public to engage in a conversation, increasing the public’s understanding and interest in scientific research. This paper reviews outreach and public engagement initiatives undertaken by researchers from the University of Southampton’s Optical Engineering and Quantum Photonics Group during a 5-year research program grant entitled Building Large Optical Quantum States. The activities have been supported by a UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council program grant and institutional, national and international professional organizations. The paper discusses activities and hand-outs that have been developed to increase the visibility and public understanding of integrated-photonics fabrication and testing facilities, including a cleanroom-based process for the design and fabrication of quantum outreach chips. More than 1,000 of these chips have been distributed to children, parents and government officials in public events and the activities have contributed towards the authors’ research group receiving the 2017 South East England Physics Network Highly Commended Award for Best Research Group. This paper also discusses the impact of these activities and lessons learned.
Novel research-inspired outreach activities allow scientists and members of the public to engage in a conversation, increasing the public’s understanding and interest in scientific research. This paper reviews outreach and public engagement initiatives undertaken by researchers from the University of Southampton’s Optical Engineering and Quantum Photonics Group during a 5-year research program grant entitled Building Large Optical Quantum States. The activities have been supported by a UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council program grant and institutional, national and international professional organizations. The paper discusses activities and hand-outs that have been developed to increase the visibility and public understanding of integrated-photonics fabrication and testing facilities, including a cleanroom-based process for the design and fabrication of quantum outreach chips. More than 1,000 of these chips have been distributed to children, parents and government officials in public events and the activities have contributed towards the authors’ research group receiving the 2017 South East England Physics Network Highly Commended Award for Best Research Group. This paper also discusses the impact of these activities and lessons learned.
The Networked Quantum Information Technologies hub (NQIT) is one of the quantum hubs of the UK's agship scheme, bringing together academia, industry and government. The Optical Engineering and Quantum Pho- tonics group at the University of Southampton's Optoelectronics Research Centre have developed an interactive demonstrator of a key device within NQIT to bring quantum photonics technologies to a wider audience. The system was exhibited at the 2017 UK Quantum Showcase in London to an audience of industry and government. It also featured as part of the Quantum City stand at the 2018 Cheltenham science festival, one of the UK's leading annual science events.
Intensive studies on light–matter interactions and technological breakthroughs, especially conducted in the field of dressed photon research, have led to a growing concern regarding unsettled off-shell quantum field interactions. The Special Issue, entitled “Quantum Fields and Off-Shell Sciences”, was organized to promote the progress of such research activities from a wider perspective, not limited to dressed photon studies. This book contains excellent papers that were published in this Special Issue. It will provide scientific and technical information on the quantum fields and off-shell sciences to scientists, engineers, and students who are and will be engaged in this field.
The emerging field of quantum technologies requires a range of photonic devices, many with demanding specifications. The area of quantum information processing requires scaling in order to increase the complexity of experiments, this has led researchers towards integrated photonic platforms. The key property of these single photon devices is low-loss operation and as a consequence glass and silica devices have been a dominant platform. Whereas atom chip sensors require stable compact systems for converting optical fibre modes to free space beams for atom trapping. In this talk I will present the photonic engineering undertaken at the University of Southampton to fabricate devices for the quantum technology community. The key fabrication approach is a direct UV writing technique, where a UV laser beam is used to define waveguides, splitters/couplers, Bragg gratings and 2D tilted gratings. The fabricated devices include cascaded arrays of Mach-Zehnder interferometers to preform photon-photon interactions, single photon sources via spontaneous four-wave mixing, integrated superconducting single photon detectors and 2D diffraction gratings. In addition to the inscription method I will describe the fabrication of the substrates required for the UV writing process which are generated via Flame Hydrolysis Deposition. I will discuss our most recent work on single photon linear optical networks constructed from a number of identical reconfigurable modules. The modules are characterised separately to produce an accurate model of the network and the cellular approach permits the replacement of modules that are deficient. Each module comprises of an array of 10 Mach-Zehnder interferometers with 40 thermo-optic phase shifters on each chip that control both the amplitude and phase of the optical modes. By concatenating modules any arbitrary N ×N unitary network can be realised. The channel waveguides are engineered to be mode matched to standard optical fibre producing excellent coupling efficiency. I will present our recent work in this area and other photonic devices for the field of quantum technology.
This thesis presents the development of a platform to fabricate photonics integrated circuits that can be used to scale networks intended for quantum information processing (QIP) experiments. The stringent technical requirements for the transport and manipulation of quantum states of light are discussed with respect to channel waveguides and integrated gratings fabricated in silica-on-silicon through direct UV writing laser processing Tilted gratings are identified as a method to enable polarisation-based applications for this integrated platform. A novel implementation of in-line planar waveguide polarisers based on 45º tilted gratings is presented, demonstrating gratings with polarisation extinction ratio (PER) of 0.25 dB / mm and bandwidth impairments better than 0.3 dB in the C-band. 45º tilted gratings in UV written waveguides are used to create novel polarising coupler architectures with PER of 28.5 dB. The alteration of the material composition of germanesilicate planar core layers is investigated, producing waveguides with birefringence of 4.5 ± 0.2 × 10−4, higher than previously reported for this platform. A process for producing end facet endcaps to extend the platform’s capability for high power applications is also described. These developments offer potential for the scaling of QIP experiments with heralded spontaneous four-wave mixing single-photon sources. Finally, the thesis describes research-based education experiments conducted to inform a wide range of audiences on the importance of photonics technologies. The concept of Photonics, and the underlying science and associated research, has been introduced to 2,952 students from 81 schools in the South of England and over 6,000people in public events.
A century ago the first quantum revolution defined our understanding of atomic and subatomic physics. A few decades later this understanding lead to a technological revolution where the semiconductor, the laser, and the optical technologies that enable our current digital information age were created. Today, quantum research is primed for the next revolution in systems technology; ‘Quantum 2.0’ promises solutions for unhackable communications (quantum cryptography), navigation and sensing (atomic clocks), and solving complex analytical problems at the speed of light (quantum computing). In Quantum 2.0, photonics represents a stable and established technology platform upon which new quantum systems can be built. Photonics enables the generation of new wavelengths for interaction of light and matter, single photons and integrated optical circuits for quantum information processing, and optical fibre networks for the long-haul transmission of quantum information. For commercial adoption, photonics will provide an important interface between emerging quantum products and our existing telecoms networks and digital infrastructure. At the University of Southampton we are developing new manufacturing technologies in silica-on-silicon and periodically-poled lithium niobate to enable the fabrication of scalable integrated optical components as the building blocks of Quantum 2.0; in particular our focus is the development of processes suitable for transfer and adoption by industry. We will report on our progress in this area and discuss recent results enabled by our devices.
In recent years, quantum computing has gained strong traction on the global stage. Pioneering developments in quantum engineering, algorithms and software reinforce the view that quantum computation will eventually catalyze transformative technological advancements across diverse sectors. In anticipation of the future impact of quantum computing, many governments, universities and tech organizations have invested heavily into advancing quantum science, boosting quantum readiness, and building a diverse, talented workforce through quantum education initiatives. Specialized university programs, public awareness campaigns and STEM outreach activities all serve a critical function in fostering a deeper understanding of quantum physics and quantum technologies among non-experts. At the level of high school, a major vision is for these initiatives to reshape the teaching of 20th century physics in STEM classrooms, and inspire the future generation of quantum scientists and professionals. In the current paper, we are presenting the materials we have created for an outreach workshop introducing quantum computing to high school students in an approachable and engaging way. Intro2QC is an exploration of quantum computing's relevance to solving real-world challenges by relating how the unintuitive behaviours of quantum systems can be useful in providing computational advantage. The workshop materials include an online interactive quantum programming tutorial hosted on the Intro2QC website, along with the full lesson plan for STEM instructors and the presentation slides available on the Github repository. This single-session 90-minute workshop has been delivered to approximately 160 students in multiple school groups from Grades 9-12 in British Columbia Canada in the highlight of the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology.