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Quantum Sensing and Nano Electronics and Photonics

Photon-pair sources for chip-scale quantum technology

Imad I. Faruque, Ben M. Burridge, Siddarth Koduru Joshi, John Rarity, Jorge Barreto

Published Mar 15, 2023• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Quantum technology promises to deliver quantum computers, unbreakable communication and ultra-sensitive sensors. Quantum photonics is one of the prominent platforms of quantum technology which utilizes photons – often called flying qubits. Entanglement generated from a photon-pair source is a crucial resource for many quantum photonic implementations, for example, an entanglement-based global quantum network and metrology beyond classical limits. Here, we will discuss our recent results of chip-scale photon-pair sources in silicon photonics. These results are focused on improving brightness, spectral purity and indistinguishability of the photon-pair sources, for example, by engineering photonic structures and temporal pulse shaping. We have found that both methods have trade-offs among brightness, spectral purity and indistinguishability. Additionally, we have observed that generating a high-fidelity quantum state using a quantum photonic circuit requires sufficient isolation between the nonlinear photon-pair sources and the linear photonic circuit. It is crucial to remove the nonlinear effect of the strong pump both before and after the sources to limit the spurious photon-pair generation which contaminates the target quantum state.

DOI
10.1117/12.2649255

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Quantum technology promises to deliver quantum computers, unbreakable communication and ultra-sensitive sensors. Quantum photonics is one of the prominent platforms of quantum technology which utilizes photons – often called flying qubits. Entanglement generated from a photon-pair source is a crucial resource for many quantum photonic implementations, for example, an entanglement-based global quantum network and metrology beyond classical limits. Here, we will discuss our recent results of chip-scale photon-pair sources in silicon photonics. These results are focused on improving brightness, spectral purity and indistinguishability of the photon-pair sources, for example, by engineering photonic structures and temporal pulse shaping. We have found that both methods have trade-offs among brightness, spectral purity and indistinguishability. Additionally, we have observed that generating a high-fidelity quantum state using a quantum photonic circuit requires sufficient isolation between the nonlinear photon-pair sources and the linear photonic circuit. It is crucial to remove the nonlinear effect of the strong pump both before and after the sources to limit the spurious photon-pair generation which contaminates the target quantum state.
Quantum photonic entanglement generated from a photon-pair source is a crucial resource for many quantum technological implementations, for example, an entanglement-based global quantum network and metrology beyond classical limits. For the former, we require sufficient brightness to mitigate the loss to send the quantum state to a long distance. Additionally, to enable entanglement swapping, the heralded photons need to be spectrally pure and indistinguishable enabling high visibility quantum interference. Here, we discuss the required attributes and current benchmarks of the chip-scale photon-pair sources arguing that they are the prime candidate for the above applications.
Chip-scale integrated photonic circuits provide an attractive platform for the implementation of many quantum photonic technologies ranging from precise metrology to secure communication and quantum computation. In particular, silicon photonic platforms support micron-scale nonlinear optical sources of non-classical light which can be mass manufactured using the robust fabrication processes pioneered by the CMOS microelectronics industry. Integration of these quantum photonic sources with high-performance classical photonic devices on the same chip is required for truly scalable quantum information technologies. Integrated nonlinear resonators are investigated as sources of quantum mechanically correlated photon pair sources. An all-order dispersion engineering method is presented as a robust design synthesis for micoring sources. In addition, a novel concept of coupled mode dispersion compensation is proposed and demonstrated, providing significantly improved performance characteristics of resonant four-wave mixing sources. Next a photon pair source is demonstrated in a commercial CMOS microelectronics process opening the door to future integration of quantum photonics with electronic logic and control circuits. Classical nonlinear optical measurements of stimulated four-wave mixing are used for the first time to accurately predict the quantum correlations from the same device operating in the photon pair regime. Next the first demonstration of fully on-chip pump rejection is demonstrated with over 95 dB pump extinction improving the figures of merit from previous demonstrations by multiple orders of magnitude, including losses, detected pair rates and size. Finally, proposals for introducing novel degrees of freedom provided by an integrated platform are presented for further improving the performance of both photon pair and classical nonlinear optical sources.
Photon pair sources are fundamental building blocks for quantum entanglement and quantum communication. Recent studies in silicon photonics have documented promising characteristics for photon pair sources within the telecommunications band, including sub-milliwatt optical pump power, high spectral brightness, and high photon purity. However, most quantum systems suitable for local operation (e.g., storage/computation) support optical transitions in the visible or short nearinfrared bands. In comparison to telecommunications wavelengths, the significantly higher optical attenuation in silica at such wavelengths limits the length scale over which optical-fiber-based quantum communication between such local nodes can take place. One approach to connect such systems over fiber is through a photon pair source that can bridge the visible and telecom bands, but an appropriate source, which should produce narrow-band photon pairs with a high signal-to-noise ratio, has not yet been developed in an integrated platform. Here, we demonstrate a nanophotonic visible-telecom photon pair source for the first time, using high quality factor silicon nitride resonators to generate narrow-band photon pairs with unprecedented purity and brightness, with coincidence-toaccidental ratio (CAR) up to 3,780 ± 140 and detected photon-pair flux up to (18,400 ± 1,000) pairs/s. We further demonstrate visible-telecom time-energy entanglement and its distribution over a 20 km fiber, far exceeding the fiber length over which purely visible wavelength quantum light sources can be transmitted. Finally, we show how dispersion engineering of the microresonators enables the connections of different species of trapped atoms/ions, defect centers, and quantum dots to the telecommunications bands for future quantum communication systems.
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.
Photon-pair sources are essential for complex and scalable quantum photonics circuits. Silicon photonics offers a scalable and low cost platform with a mature fabrication technology for realising this [1] . Recent demonstrations of photon-pair generation and quantum interference in the 2.1 µm band have paved the way towards mid-infrared integrated photon sources [2] , where many gases can be sensed with unique ‘fingerprint’ absorption lines. Producing long wavelength photons with large spectral detunings from the pump, utilising anomalous group-velocity dispersion and type-0 phase matching, is hard due to the highly dispersive nature of nanoscale silicon waveguides.
Quantum-photonic chips, which integrate quantum light sources alongside active and passive optical elements, as well as single-photon detectors, show great potential for photonic quantum information processing and quantum technology. Mature semiconductor nanofabrication processes allow for scaling such photonic integrated circuits to on-chip networks of increasing complexity. Second-order nonlinear materials are the method of choice for generating photonic quantum states in the overwhelming majority of linear optic experiments using bulk components, but integration with waveguide circuitry on a nanophotonic chip proved to be challenging. Here, we demonstrate such an on-chip parametric down-conversion source of photon pairs based on second-order nonlinearity in an aluminum-nitride microring resonator. We show the potential of our source for quantum information processing by measuring the high visibility anti-bunching of heralded single photons with nearly ideal state purity. Our down-conversion source yields measured coincidence rates of 80 Hz, which implies MHz generation rates of correlated photon pairs. Low noise performance is demonstrated by measuring high coincidence-to-accidental ratios. The generated photon pairs are spectrally far separated from the pump field, providing great potential for realizing sufficient on-chip filtering and monolithic integration of quantum light sources, waveguide circuits and single-photon detectors. A chip-based source of photon pairs for applications in quantum information processing has been built by a team of scientists in the US. Xiang Guo and co-workers from Yale University built the quantum light source from an aluminum nitride microring resonator. The strong second-order nonlinearity of the aluminum nitride yields efficient parametric down-conversion. This allows 775-nm-wavelength pump photons to be converted into a pair of entangled photons in the telecommunications window of 1550 nm. Tests indicated that the heralded photons generated by the microring source are anti-bunched and have high visibility and a high purity of state, indicating that they are highly suitable for use in quantum optics experiments. In principle, the on-chip source is compatible with megahertz generation rates and large-scale manufacture of integrated optical circuits.