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SPIE Quantum Information Science, Sensing, and Computation

Multi-photon-pair production in packaged, foundry-fabricated, silicon waveguide spirals

Vijay Soorya Shunmuga Sundaram, Joseph A. Monteleone, Vincent Fittos, Matthew van Niekerk, Mario Ciminelli, Gerald Leake, Daniel J. Coleman, Michael L. Fanto, Gregory A. Howland, Stefan F. Preble

Published Jun 7, 2024• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

We report a fully-packaged, on-chip multi-photon-pair source using spontaneous-four-wave-mixing (SFWM) in silicon waveguide spirals. Our source consists of four, two-centimeter long spiral waveguides that are pumped in parallel using a pulsed laser source. We detected a four-fold coincidence rate of 180±20Hz, corresponding to an on-chip coincidence rate of 908±42Hz.

DOI
10.1117/12.3021427

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Applied Optics and Photonics China (AOPC)•Dec 13, 2024•0 citations
We report a fully-packaged, on-chip multi-photon-pair source using spontaneous-four-wave-mixing (SFWM) in silicon waveguide spirals. Our source consists of four, two-centimeter long spiral waveguides that are pumped in parallel using a pulsed laser source. We detected a four-fold coincidence rate of 180±20Hz, corresponding to an on-chip coincidence rate of 908±42Hz.
We have demonstrated a packaged Silicon photon pair source. The spiral silicon waveguide source is 500 nm x 220 nm x 2 cm long and was packaged with input/output optical fibers enabling turn-key generation of photon pairs by connecting the input optical fiber to a telecommunication grade laser. In this work, we experimentally characterized the generation of bi-photons by spontaneous four-wave mixing in the Silicon waveguide. The insertion loss of the chip, after packaging, was measured to be approximately 15 dB (3 dB/facet, waveguide propagation loss of less than 1.5 dB/cm, 6 dB from splitters sequence). We investigated the phase matching of the source by wavelength tuning the 1 nm bandpass filters and found that the generated bi-photons have a half-bandwidth of 10 nm about the pump wavelength. We investigate pulse pumping using an actively mode-locked fiber laser with a 500 MHz repetition rate, pulse duration of approximately 30 ps and peak pulse power of 400 mW. Excitation of the pulsed source with a power of 1.4 mW through the chip generated 300 kHz coincidence rates after passing the chip’s output through a series of spectral bandpass filters (-1.4 db in channel 1 and -2.4 dB in channel 2 of filter loss and approximately 85 % efficiency of the detectors: inferred on-chip pair generation rate of 58 MHz). We also investigate two sources with 6 mW of continuous-wave pump power to generate 1550 nm bi-photons, generating 6.0 kHz coincidence rates (inferred on-chip pair generation rate of 2.3 MHz).
Large-scale quantum photonic circuits require integrating multiple single-photon sources, which are typically based on spontaneous four-wave mixing (SFWM) in spiral waveguides or microring resonators (MRRs). Photons can be generated in both clockwise (CW) and counterclockwise (CCW) orientations from a single source in a Sagnac configuration, showing promise for improving scalability. In this work, we propose a fully integrable scheme for bidirectional creation and usage of single photons. This concept is based on two asymmetric Mach-Zehnder interferometers (AMZIs) integrated within the Sagnac loop. As a proof of concept, we fabricated a device with a spiral waveguide on a silicon chip and demonstrated its application as a quantum splitter and two multi-wavelength quantum light sources.
Quantum technologies that harness the properties of superposition and entanglement promise to revolutionise many fields, from information processing to metrology. Silicon-integrated quantum photonics operating in the telecom band suffers from deleterious two-photon absorption (TPA) [1,2]. Cross-TPA reduces the brightness and ultimately the heralding efficiency [3] of spontaneous four-wave mixing (SFWM) photon-pair sources, where single photons necessarily co-propagate with a bright pump. Nonlinear losses can be mitigated by pumping and generating photons with energies close to and beyond silicon's two-photon band edge [4,5]. We report the first quantum-correlated photon pairs in the 2.1 μm short-wave infrared (SWIR) band, produced on-chip from a silicon waveguide spiral.
We generate quantum correlated photon-pairs at 1550 nm telecom band via pulse-pumped spontaneous four-wave mixing in high-index doped silica glass (HDSG) waveguides. The input and output ports of the 30-cm-long on-chip HDSG spiral waveguide are coupled to standard polarization maintaining fibers, which brings convenience to mode excitation and photon-pair collection. The flattened group velocity dispersion of the TE mode in the spiral waveguide is about 39 ps/km/nm at 1550 nm. When pumping around 1550 nm, the wavelength range of the generated signal (idler) photons can be more than 20 nm. Experimental results show that, in room temperature, the measured coincidence-to-accidental ratio (CAR) is about 200 when the photon-pair production rate is about 2×10-5 pairs/pulse, and the main noise origin of the photon pair source is spontaneous Raman scattering. Our investigations show that the HDSG waveguide, which can be fabricated using CMOS compatible technologies, is a promising candidate for developing miniaturized quantum light sources.
Silicon-based integrated spiral waveguides are extensively used as on-chip single-photon sources. However, inherent uncertainties and limitations in single-photon fidelity pose significant theoretical performance bottlenecks. These challenges often necessitate the multiplexing of multiple sources. In this paper, we propose a novel scheme for spatial multiplexing using bidirectional spirals. By pumping a spiral waveguide bidirectionally, photon pairs are generated in both clockwise (cw) and counterclockwise (ccw) directions, each producing signal-idler photon pairs in a two-mode squeezed state. Consequently, a single spiral waveguide can function as two spatially multiplexed sources. Using CMOS fabrication technology, we constructed a bidirectional spiral waveguide structure. We measured the coincidence count rates, heralded second-order correlation function, and coincidence to accidental ratio (CAR) as functions of pump power, both before and after multiplexing. Our experimental results demonstrated a 1.67-fold increase in performance post-multiplexing. This finding underscores the potential of bidirectional spirals as spatially multiplexed sources, paving the way for the largescale integration of future photonic quantum chips.