Qubit entanglement on a silicon photonic chip

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a silicon photonic chip capable of generating and analyzing a path-entangled two-qubit state, advancing integrated quantum photonics for scalable quantum computing.

Contribution

It introduces a silicon chip integrating sources, filters, and optics to produce and analyze entangled photon states on-chip, a key step for scalable quantum systems.

Findings

High indistinguishability of ring-resonator sources

Small frequency correlations in generated photons

Successful quantum state tomography and Bell test

Abstract

Entanglement--one of the most delicate phenomena in nature--is an essential resource for quantum information applications. Large entangled cluster states have been predicted to enable universal quantum computation, with the required single- qubit measurements readily implemented with photons. Useful large-scale systems must generate and control qubit entanglement on-chip, where quantum information is naturally encoded in photon path. Here we report a silicon photonic chip which integrates resonant-enhanced sources, filters, and reconfigurable optics to generate a path-entangled two-qubit state--the smallest non-trivial cluster state--and analyse its entanglement. We show that ring-resonator-based spontaneous four-wave mixing sources can be made highly indistinguishable, despite their nonlinear dynamics, and the first evidence that their frequency correlations are small, as predicted. We use quantum state tomography, and the strict Bell-CHSH inequality to quantify entanglement in the device, confirming its high performance. This work integrates essential components for building devices and systems to harness quantum entanglement on the large scale.