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Applied Physics Letters

Achieving stable fiber coupling of quantum dot telecom C-band single-photons to an SOI photonic device

Stephanie Bauer, Dongze Wang, Niklas Hoppe, Cornelius Nawrath, Julius Fischer, Norbert Witz, Mathias Kaschel, Christian Schweikert, Michael Jetter, Simone Luca Portalupi, Manfred Berroth, Peter Michler

Published Nov 22, 2021• 12 citations

Abstract

The well-established silicon-on-insulator platform is very promising for large-scale integrated photonic and quantum photonic technologies due to the mature manufacturing technology and integration density. Here, we present an efficient and stable fiber-to-chip coupling, which enables the injection of single photons from telecom quantum dots into a silicon-on-insulator photonic chip. Two additional fibers further couple the chip to single-photon detectors. The approach chosen to achieve steady fiber-chip coupling is based on the use of grating couplers steadily packaged with angled single-mode fibers. Using this technique, coupling efficiencies between the fiber and the SOI chip as high as 69.1% per grating coupler (including the taper losses) are reached. The effective interface between the quantum light generated by quantum dots and the silicon components is verified via the measurement of the second-order correlation function using a Hanbury–Brown and Twiss setup. With g(2)(0)=0.051±0.001, it clearly proves the single-photon nature of the injected QD photons. This demonstrates the reliability of the interfacing method and opens the route to employ telecom quantum dots as non-classical light sources with high complexity silicon photonic functionalities.

DOI: 10.1063/5.0067749

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The well-established silicon-on-insulator platform is very promising for large-scale integrated photonic and quantum photonic technologies due to the mature manufacturing technology and integration density. Here, we present an efficient and stable fiber-to-chip coupling, which enables the injection of single photons from telecom quantum dots into a silicon-on-insulator photonic chip. Two additional fibers further couple the chip to single-photon detectors. The approach chosen to achieve steady fiber-chip coupling is based on the use of grating couplers steadily packaged with angled single-mode fibers. Using this technique, coupling efficiencies between the fiber and the SOI chip as high as 69.1% per grating coupler (including the taper losses) are reached. The effective interface between the quantum light generated by quantum dots and the silicon components is verified via the measurement of the second-order correlation function using a Hanbury–Brown and Twiss setup. With g(2)(0)=0.051±0.001, it clearly proves the single-photon nature of the injected QD photons. This demonstrates the reliability of the interfacing method and opens the route to employ telecom quantum dots as non-classical light sources with high complexity silicon photonic functionalities.

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Efficient generation and control of quantum light on a chip is very important to achieve scalable quantum photonic systems. Solid-state quantum emitters can generate single photons with high efficiency, while silicon photonic circuits can manipulate them in an integrated device structure. Combining these two material platforms, therefore, enable us to utilize the advantages of both systems and make feasible integrated quantum photonic devices. We demonstrate hybrid integration of solid-state quantum dots to a silicon photonic device by using a pick-and-place technique and perform Hanbury-Brown and Twiss experiments on the silicon chip with integrated quantum emitters.

The demand for integrated photonic chips combining the generation and manipulation of quantum states of light is steadily increasing, driven by the need for compact and scalable platforms for quantum information technologies. While photonic circuits with diverse functionalities are being developed in different single material platforms, it has become crucial to realize hybrid photonic circuits that harness the advantages of multiple materials while mitigating their respective weaknesses, resulting in enhanced capabilities. Here, we demonstrate a hybrid III-V/silicon quantum photonic device combining the strong second-order nonlinearity and direct band gap of the III-V semiconductor platform with the high maturity and CMOS compatibility of the silicon photonic platform. Our device embeds the spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) of photon pairs into an Al Ga As source and their vertical routing to an adhesively bonded silicon-on-insulator circuitry, within an evanescent coupling scheme managing both polarization states. This enables the on-chip generation of broadband ( > 40 nm) telecom photons by type-0 and type-2 SPDC from the hybrid device, at room temperature and with internal pair generation rates exceeding 10 5 s − 1 for both types, while the pump beam is strongly rejected. Two-photon interference with 92% visibility (and up to 99% upon 5-nm spectral filtering) proves the high energy-time entanglement quality of the produced quantum state, thereby enabling a wide range of quantum information applications on chip, within a hybrid architecture compliant with electrical pumping and merging the assets of two mature and highly complementary platforms in view of out-of-the-lab deployment of quantum technologies. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

For quantum light sources in everyday telecommunication networks, quantum science needs to be fully transformed into quantum technology. The first necessary step to move outside a well-controlled lab environment requires the use of quantum light sources operating in the technologically relevant telecom O- and C-band. This can be provided using epitaxial quantum dots as deterministic sources of quantum light. Particularly intriguing is that emitters operating at telecom wavelengths are rapidly catching up with their short wavelength counterparts in terms of performances. Here, we make a decisive step forward in the development of quantum communication networks: a state-of-the-art source of quantum light, a semiconductor quantum dot (QD), with record coincidence rate for entangled photon emission in the telecom C-band, is operated inside an optimized rack-based setup. This setup includes a tunable pulsed laser for the QD excitation (from quasi- to fully resonant excitation), all optics for the excitation filtering, and QD signal coupling into single-mode fibers. Overall, the setup allows for above

50\%

transmission for both exciton and biexciton photons. These results show that quantum dots-based telecom light sources can now be transported and integrated into existing fiber infrastructures, an important step to demonstrate the feasibility of the upcoming quantum internet.

Fiber-coupled single photon sources are considered important components of photonics-based quantum information processors. Most fiber-coupled single photon sources require careful alignment between fibers and quantum emitters. In this work, we present an alignment-free fiber-integrated single photon source based on an InAs/InP quantum dot emitting at telecom wavelengths. We designed a nanobeam containing the quantum dots attached to a fiber taper. The adiabatic tapered coupler of the nanobeam enables efficient light coupling to the fiber taper. Using a tungsten probe in a focused ion beam system, we transferred the nanobeam to the fiber taper. The observed fiber-coupled single photon emission occurs with a brightness of 1.4% and a purity of 83%. This device provides a building block for fiber-optic quantum circuits that have various applications, such as quantum communication and distributed quantum computing.