Electro-mechanical control of an on-chip optical beam splitter containing an embedded quantum emitter

TL;DR

This paper presents an on-chip GaAs optical beam splitter with embedded quantum dots, whose splitting ratio can be dynamically controlled via electro-mechanical actuation, enabling scalable quantum photonic circuits.

Contribution

It introduces a novel electro-mechanical tuning method for an integrated quantum optical device with embedded single-photon sources.

Findings

Reversible tuning of the beam splitter ratio achieved.

Device demonstrates integration of quantum emitters with tunable photonic circuits.

Scalable approach suitable for quantum information processing.

Abstract

We demonstrate electro-mechanical control of an on-chip GaAs optical beam splitter containing a quantum dot single-photon source. The beam splitter consists of two nanobeam waveguides, which form a directional coupler (DC). The splitting ratio of the DC is controlled by varying the out-of-plane separation of the two waveguides using electro-mechanical actuation. We reversibly tune the beam splitter between an initial state, with emission into both output arms, and a final state with photons emitted into a single output arm. The device represents a compact and scalable tuning approach for use in III-V semiconductor integrated quantum optical circuits.