Quantum photonics at telecom wavelengths based on lithium niobate waveguides

TL;DR

This review discusses the development and application of lithium niobate waveguide technology for quantum photonics at telecom wavelengths, highlighting its role in quantum communication systems.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of lithium niobate's material properties and recent advances in quantum photonic components based on this platform.

Findings

Lithium niobate waveguides enable efficient quantum light sources.

They are integral to quantum memories and wavelength conversion.

The platform supports complex quantum photonic circuits.

Abstract

Integrated optical components on lithium niobate play a major role in standard high-speed communication systems. Over the last two decades, after the birth and positioning of quantum information science, lithium niobate waveguide architectures have emerged as one of the key platforms for enabling photonics quantum technologies. Due to mature technological processes for waveguide structure integration, as well as inherent and efficient properties for nonlinear optical effects, lithium niobate devices are nowadays at the heart of many photon-pair or triplet sources, single-photon detectors, coherent wavelength-conversion interfaces, and quantum memories. Consequently, they find applications in advanced and complex quantum communication systems, where compactness, stability, efficiency, and interconnectability with other guided-wave technologies are required. In this review paper, we first introduce the material aspects of lithium niobate, and subsequently discuss all of the above mentioned quantum components, ranging from standard photon-pair sources to more complex and advanced circuits.