Photon pair generation from compact silicon microring resonators using microwatt-level pump powers

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates efficient photon pair generation in ultra-compact silicon microring resonators using microwatt-level pump powers, highlighting scalable fabrication and potential for integrated quantum photonics.

Contribution

It introduces a method for photon pair generation in very small silicon microrings with low pump power, optimizing device parameters for scalable quantum photonics.

Findings

Photon pairs generated with microwatt pump powers

Compact device footprint less than 5×10^{-4} mm^2

Scalable fabrication using deep ultraviolet lithography

Abstract

Microring resonators made from silicon are becoming a popular microscale device format for generating photon pairs at telecommunications wavelengths at room temperature. In compact devices with a footprint less than $5\times 10^{-4}$ mm$^2$, we demonstrate pair generation using only a few microwatts of average pump power. We discuss the role played by important parameters such as the loss, group-velocity dispersion and the ring-waveguide coupling coefficient in finding the optimum operating point for silicon microring pair generation. Silicon photonics can be fabricated using deep ultraviolet lithography wafer-scale fabrication processes, which is scalable and cost-effective. Such small devices and low pump power requirements, and the side-coupled waveguide geometry which uses an integrated waveguide, could be beneficial for future scaled-up architectures where many pair-generation devices are required on the same chip.