Christopher C. Tison

On-Chip Quantum Interference from a Single Silicon Ring-Resonator Source

Here we demonstrate quantum interference of photons on a Silicon chip produced from a single ring resonator photon source. The source is seamlessly integrated with a Mach-Zehnder interferometer, which path entangles degenerate bi-photons produced via spontaneous four wave mixing in the Silicon ring resonator. The resulting bi-photon N00N state is controlled by varying the relative phase of the integrated Mach-Zehnder interferometer, resulting in high two-photon interference visibilities of V~96%. Furthermore, we show that the interference can be produced using pump wavelengths tuned to all of the ring resonances accessible with our tunable lasers (C+L band). This work is a key demonstration towards the simplified integration of multiple photon sources and quantum circuits together on a monolithic chip, in turn, enabling quantum information chips with much greater complexity and functionality.

Truly unentangled photon pairs without spectral filtering

We demonstrate that an integrated silicon microring resonator is capable of efficiently producing photon pairs that are completely unentangled; such pairs are a key component of heralded single-photon sources. A dual-channel interferometric coupling scheme can be used to independently tune the quality factors associated with the pump and signal and idler modes, yielding a biphoton wavefunction with a Schmidt number arbitrarily close to unity. This will permit the generation of heralded single-photon states with unit purity.

Quantum computing in a piece of glass

Quantum gates and simple quantum algorithms can be designed utilizing the diffraction phenomena of a photon within a multiplexed holographic element. The quantum eigenstates we use are the photons linear momentum (LM) as measured by the number of waves of tilt across the aperture. Two properties of quantum computing within the circuit model make this approach attractive. First, any conditional measurement can be commuted in time with any unitary quantum gate - the timeless nature of quantum computing. Second, photon entanglement can be encoded as a superposition state of a single photon in a higher-dimensional state space afforded by LM. Our theoretical and numerical results indicate that OptiGrates photo-thermal refractive (PTR) glass is an enabling technology. We will review our previous design of a quantum projection operator and give credence to this approach on a representative quantum gate grounded on coupled-mode theory and numerical simulations, all with parameters consistent with PTR glass. We discuss the strengths (high efficiencies, robustness to environment) and limitations (scalability, crosstalk) of this technology. While not scalable, the utility and robustness of such optical elements for broader quantum information processing applications can be substantial.

Path to increasing the coincidence efficiency of integrated resonant photon sources

Silicon ring resonators are used as photon pair sources by taking advantage of silicon’s large third order nonlinearity with a process known as spontaneous four wave mixing. These sources are capable of producing pairs of indistinguishable photons but typically suffer from an effective 50% loss. By slightly decoupling the input waveguide from the ring, the desired photons generated in the ring can preferentially be directed to the drop port. Thus, the ratio between the coincidences from the drop port and the total number of coincidences from all ports (coincidence efficiency) can be significantly increased, with the trade-off being that the pump is less efficiently coupled into the ring. In this paper, ring resonators with this design have been demonstrated having coincidence efficiency of ∼ 96% but requiring a factor of ∼ 10 increase in the pump power. Through the modification of the coupling design that relies on additional spectral dependence, it is possible to achieve similar coincidence efficiencies without the increased pumping requirement. This can be achieved by coupling the input waveguide to the ring multiple times, thus creating a Mach-Zehnder interferometer. This coupler design can be used on both sides of the ring resonator so that resonances supported by one of the couplers are suppressed by the other. This is the ideal configuration for a photon-pair source as it can only support the pump photons at the input side while only allowing the generated photons to leave through the output side. This work realizes a device with preliminary results exhibiting the desired spectral dependence and with a coincidence efficiency as high as ∼ 97% while allowing the pump to be nearly critically coupled to the ring. The coincidence efficiency is measured to be near unity and reflects a significant reduction in the intrinsic losses typically associated with double bus resonators This device has the potential to greatly improve the scalability and performance of quantum computing and communication systems.

Wide-bandgap integrated photonic circuits for interfacing with quantum memories (Conference Presentation)

Quantum information processing relies on the fundamental property of quantum interference, where the quality of the interference directly correlates to the indistinguishability of the interacting particles. The creation of these indistinguishable particles, photons in this case, has conventionally been accomplished with nonlinear crystals and optical filters to remove spectral distinguishability, albeit sacrificing the number of photons. This research describes the use of an integrated aluminum nitride microring resonator circuit to selectively generate photon pairs at the narrow cavity transmissions, thereby producing spectrally indistinguishable photons in the ultraviolet regime to interact with trapped ion quantum memories. The spectral characteristics of these photons must be carefully controlled for two reasons: (i) interference quality depends on the spectral indistinguishability, and (ii) the wavelength must be strictly controlled to interact with atomic transitions. The specific ion of interest for these trapped ion quantum memories is Ytterbium which has a transition at 369.5 nm with 12.5 GHz offset levels. Ytterbium ions serve as very long lived and stable quantum memories with storage times on the order of 10’s of minutes, compared with photonic quantum memories which are limited to 10-6 to 10-3 seconds. The combination of the long lived atomic memory, integrated photonic circuitry, and the photonic quantum bits are necessary to produce the first quantum information processors. In this seminar, I will present results on ultraviolet wavelength operation, dispersion analysis, and propagation loss in aluminum nitride waveguides.

Quantifying record entanglement in extremely large Hilbert spaces with adaptively sampled EPR correlations

As applications of quantum information and processing grow in scale in sophistication, the ability to quantify the resources present in very high-dimensional quantum systems is an important experimental problem needing solution. In particular, quantum entanglement is a resource fundamental to most applications in quantum information, but becomes intractable to measure in high dimensional systems, both because of the difficulty in obtaining a complete description of the entangled state, and the subsequent calculation of entanglement measures. In this paper, we discuss how one can measure record levels of entanglement simply using the same correlations employed to demonstrate the EPR paradox. To accomplish this, we developed a new entropic uncertainty relation where the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) correlations between positions and momenta of photon pairs bound quantum entropy, which in turn bounds entanglement. To sample the EPR correlations efficiently, one can sample at variable resolution, and combine this with relations in information theory so that only regions of high probability are sampled at high resolution, while entanglement is never over-estimated. This approach makes quantifying extremely high-dimensional entanglement scalable, with efficiency that actually improves with higher entanglement.

Measurement of Quantum Interference in a Silicon Ring Resonator Photon Source

Silicon photonic chips have the potential to realize complex integrated quantum information processing circuits, including photon sources, qubit manipulation, and integrated single-photon detectors. Here, we present the key aspects of preparing and testing a silicon photonic quantum chip with an integrated photon source and two-photon interferometer. The most important aspect of an integrated quantum circuit is minimizing loss so that all of the generated photons are detected with the highest possible fidelity. Here, we describe how to perform low-loss edge coupling by using an ultra-high numerical aperture fiber to closely match the mode of the silicon waveguides. By using an optimized fusion splicing recipe, the UHNA fiber is seamlessly interfaced with a standard single-mode fiber. This low-loss coupling allows the measurement of high-fidelity photon production in an integrated silicon ring resonator and the subsequent two-photon interference of the produced photons in a closely integrated Mach-Zehnder interferometer. This paper describes the essential procedures for the preparation and characterization of high-performance and scalable silicon quantum photonic circuits.

Quantum Silicon Photonics: Photon sources and Circuits

We report high performance ring resonator photon sources and the integration of the sources into quantum photonic circuits. We also discuss ring resonators as a building block for compact, reconfigurable, linear quantum optical circuits.

A bright PPKTP waveguide source of polarization entangled photons

The need for bright efficient sources of entangled photons has been a subject of tremendous research over the last decade. Researchers have been working to increase the brightness and purity to help overcome the spontaneous nature of the sources. Periodic poling has been implemented to allow for the use of crystals that would not normally satisfy the phase matching conditions. Utilizing periodic poling and single mode waveguide confinement of the pump field has yielded extremely large effective nonlinearities in sources easily producing millions of photon pairs. Here we will demonstrate these large nonlinearity effects in a periodically poled potassium titanyl phosphate (PPKTP) waveguide as well as characterizing the source purity.

A periodic probabilistic photonic cluster state generator

The research detailed in this paper describes a Periodic Cluster State Generator (PCSG) consisting of a monolithic integrated waveguide device that employs four wave mixing, an array of probabilistic photon guns, single mode sequential entanglers and an array of controllable entangling gates between modes to create arbitrary cluster states. Utilizing the PCSG one is able to produce a cluster state with nearest neighbor entanglement in the form of a linear or square lattice. Cluster state resources of this type have been proven to be able to perform universal quantum computation.