On-Chip Single-Photon Sifter

TL;DR

This paper presents a scalable on-chip quantum photonic platform that integrates single quantum emitters with tunable filtering, excitation suppression, and wavelength multiplexing, significantly advancing integrated quantum light sources for practical applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel hybrid nanofabrication method for deterministic integration of quantum emitters with on-chip filtering and routing, overcoming key challenges in scalable quantum photonics.

Findings

Achieved >95 dB excitation suppression.

Demonstrated tunable routing of single photons.

Created a compact, reconfigurable quantum photonic circuit.

Abstract

Quantum states of light play a pivotal role in modern science[1] and future photonic applications[2]. While impressive progress has been made in their generation and manipulation with high fidelities, the common table-top approach is reaching its limits for practical quantum applications. Since the advent of integrated quantum nanophotonics[3] different material platforms based on III-V nanostructures-, color centers-, and nonlinear waveguides[4-8] as on-chip light sources have been investigated. Each platform has unique advantages and limitations in terms of source properties, optical circuit complexity, and scaling potentials. However, all implementations face major challenges with efficient and tunable filtering of individual quantum states[4], scalable integration and deterministic multiplexing of on-demand selected quantum emitters[9], and on-chip excitation-suppression[10]. Here we overcome all of these challenges with a novel hybrid and scalable nanofabrication approach to generate quantum light on-chip, where selected single III-V quantum emitters are positioned and deterministically integrated in a CMOS compatible circuit[11] with controlled on-chip filtering and excitation-suppression.Furthermore, we demonstrate novel on-chip quantum wavelength division multiplexing, showing tunable routing of single-photons. Our reconfigurable quantum photonic circuits with a foot print one million times smaller than similar table-top approaches, offering outstanding excitation suppression of more than 95 dB and efficient routing of single photons over a bandwidth of 40 nm, are essential to unleash integrated quantum optical technologies full potential.