ABSTRACT High‐brightness–integrated quantum light sources represent a fundamental element for large‐scale photonic quantum technologies. Integrated microring resonator (MRR) in highly nonlinear and ultralow‐loss material platforms enable entangled photon‐pair generation, but device performance is affected by fabrication tolerances and can thus not be judiciously controlled. Redundant designs based on parameter variation are impractical for chip‐scale circuits, as the sheer number of parameters would be too complex. To address this, passive photonic circuits must be combined with active control elements to optimize photon‐pair emission and to match emission characteristics among sources. Here, we present a comprehensive study of an actively tunable, interferometrically coupled integrated MRR implemented in silicon nitride (SiN). By manipulating two thermally controlled phase shifters, the ring–bus coupling and the resonator phase can be dynamically adjusted, enabling post‐fabrication control of its quality factor (Q‐factor) between 10 5 and 10 6 to optimize the photon emission bandwidth and the pair generation rate. We directly demonstrate for the first time that the optimal coupling and emission characteristics do not occur at critical coupling and vary across frequency modes due to dispersion effects, in good agreement with our theoretical model. These findings highlight the role of adaptive integrated photon sources for single‐batch fabrication of reconfigurable devices with application‐specific spectral properties.
ABSTRACT High‐brightness–integrated quantum light sources represent a fundamental element for large‐scale photonic quantum technologies. Integrated microring resonator (MRR) in highly nonlinear and ultralow‐loss material platforms enable entangled photon‐pair generation, but device performance is affected by fabrication tolerances and can thus not be judiciously controlled. Redundant designs based on parameter variation are impractical for chip‐scale circuits, as the sheer number of parameters would be too complex. To address this, passive photonic circuits must be combined with active control elements to optimize photon‐pair emission and to match emission characteristics among sources. Here, we present a comprehensive study of an actively tunable, interferometrically coupled integrated MRR implemented in silicon nitride (SiN). By manipulating two thermally controlled phase shifters, the ring–bus coupling and the resonator phase can be dynamically adjusted, enabling post‐fabrication control of its quality factor (Q‐factor) between 10 5 and 10 6 to optimize the photon emission bandwidth and the pair generation rate. We directly demonstrate for the first time that the optimal coupling and emission characteristics do not occur at critical coupling and vary across frequency modes due to dispersion effects, in good agreement with our theoretical model. These findings highlight the role of adaptive integrated photon sources for single‐batch fabrication of reconfigurable devices with application‐specific spectral properties.
Abstract Microring resonators (MRRs) are extensively utilized in photonic chips for generating quantum light sources and enabling high-efficiency nonlinear frequency conversion. However, conventional microrings are typically optimized for a single specific function, limiting their versatility in multifunctional applications. In this work, we propose a reconfigurable microring resonator architecture designed to accommodate diverse application requirements. By integrating a cascaded Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI) as the microring coupler, the design enables independent control of the quality factors for pump, signal and idler photons through two tunable phase shifters. This capability allows for dynamic tuning and optimization of critical performance parameters, including photon-pair generation rate (PGR), spectral purity and single photon heralding efficiency (HE). The proposed structure is implemented on a silicon photonic chip, and experimental results exhibit a wide range of tunability for these parameters, with excellent agreement with theoretical predictions. This flexible and multi-functional design offers a promising pathway for high-performance, highly integrated on-chip quantum information processing systems.
Being a key component on a photonic chip, the microring usually specializes in a certain nonlinear optical process and can not simultaneously meet different working conditions for different processes. Here, we theoretically and experimentally investigate a reconfigurable silicon microring resonator to act as a optimization strategy for both classical four-wave mixing and quantum light sources. Experimental results show that the four-wave mixing efficiency with continuous wave and pulsed pump can be both optimized to a high value well matching numerical analysis. A variety of quantum light sources - including the heralded single-photon source, two-photon source and multi-photon source - are demonstrated to present a high performance and their key parameters including the pair generation rates (PGR), the heralding efficiency (HE) and the coincidence-to-accidental ratio (CAR) are controllable and optimizable. Such tunable nonlinear converter is immune to fabrication variations and can be popularized to other nonlinear optical materials, providing a simple and compact post-fabrication trimming strategy for on-chip all-optical signal processing and photonic quantum technologies.
Integrated photonics is emerging as a key technology for use in quantum information and communication. Driven by classical communication, which already has a swathe of scalable, efficient, and robust components, integrated photonics promises to transfer quantum science from a mere lab curiosity into a commercial reality. Chip-based quantum light sources are increasingly being recognized as a practical and high-performance alternative to bulky and power-hungry, table-top photon-pair sources. In particular, photon-pair sources based on spontaneous four-wave mixing in microring resonators (MRR) have emerged as a viable integrated photonic solution for quantum information and communication. This thesis relies on silicon nitride (Si3N4) MRR to realize narrowband, telecom photonpair sources. High quality factor MRRs are enabled by the low propagation losses in the Si3N4 platform; in this thesis, they are exploited to realize bright photon-pair sources with heralded spectral purity up to 0.98. Low quality factor MRRs are exploited for a proof-of-concept high-rate sequential time-bin entanglement with net visibilities up to 99.96 ± 0.03 %. For the goal of practical, real-world deployment of integrated photon-pair sources, it is not enough to demonstrate the performance of a single source. One also needs to demonstrate their high-performance operation in complex quantum networking protocols, such as entanglement swapping between genuinely independent sources. Here, for the first time, we demonstrate entanglement swapping between two independent, spatially separated, and asynchronously-pumped MRR photon-pair sources. Our sources operate in the continuous-wave regime, and time-resolved detection results in high Hong-Ou-Mandel (93.2 ±1.6 %) and entanglement swapping (91.2 ± 3.4 %) visibilities. Finally, to further improve our rates while maintaining high visibilities in multi-source interference scenarios, the origin of an on-chip-generated noise must be identified and mitigated. Here, we present our first efforts in the quest for tackling this notorious noise problem.
Entangled photon-pair sources are essential components for emerging quantum information-processing technologies. Among various platforms, on-chip microresonators offer strong potential due to their resonant enhancement and suitability for wafer-scale integration. In this study, we demonstrate ultrabright entangled photon-pair generation from high- Q silicon microring resonators. By optimizing the device geometry and coupling configuration to suppress sidewall scattering and selectively excite the fundamental mode, we achieve single-mode resonance with an intrinsic Q -factor of 1.26 × 10 6 using only standard fabrication processes available in CMOS foundries. The resulting high- Q resonator yields a record-high brightness coefficient of 3.9 × 10 9 Hz/GHz/mW 2 . At an on-chip pump power of 240 μW, we obtain a maximum brightness of 22.0 MHz/GHz and a maximum photon-pair generation rate of 9.19 MHz. At a low-pump power of 10 μW, Franson-type two-photon interference exhibits a visibility of 98.0 ± 0.2%, confirming high-quality time–energy entanglement. These results show that narrow bandwidth and high generation rate can be achieved simultaneously in CMOS-compatible silicon photonic sources, thereby advancing their use in quantum repeaters and scalable quantum networks.
We demonstrate a reconfigurable photon pair source based on spontaneous parametric downconversion in a periodically poled aluminum nitride doubly resonant system. The device features two linearly uncoupled microring resonators integrated in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer, enabling independent tuning of pump and signal/idler resonances without complex dispersion engineering. Using a silicon nitride strip-loaded waveguide on poled aluminum nitride, we achieve quasi-phase-matching and resonant enhancement over a broad spectral range. Simulations predict efficient generation across a bandwidth of over 200 nm, with rates exceeding 4 MHz/mW per resonance. This platform offers high performance, spectral tunability, and fabrication tolerance for integrated quantum photonic applications.
Photon-pair sources are critical building blocks for photonic quantum systems. Leveraging Kerr nonlinearity and cavity-enhanced spontaneous four-wave mixing, chip-scale photon-pair sources can be created using microresonators built on photonic integrated circuit. For practical applications, a high microresonator quality factor Q is mandatory to magnify photon-pair sources' brightness and reduce their linewidth. The former is proportional to Q^{4}, while the latter is inversely proportional to Q. Here, we demonstrate an integrated, microresonator-based, narrowband photon-pair source. The integrated microresonator, made of silicon nitride and fabricated using a standard CMOS foundry process, features ultralow loss down to 0.03 dB/cm and intrinsic Q factor exceeding 10^{7}. The photon-pair source has brightness of 1.17×10^{9} Hz/mW^{2}/GHz and linewidth of 25.9 MHz, both of which are record values for silicon-photonics-based quantum light source. It further enables a heralded single-photon source with heralded second-order correlation g_{h}^{(2)}(0)=0.0037(5), as well as an energy-time entanglement source with a raw visibility of 0.973(9). Our work evidences the global potential of ultralow-loss integrated photonics to create novel quantum light sources and circuits, catalyzing efficient, compact, and robust interfaces to quantum communication and networks.