Integrated quantum photonics with silicon carbide: challenges and prospects

TL;DR

This paper reviews progress and challenges in developing integrated quantum photonics using silicon carbide, highlighting its potential to enable scalable quantum networks with solid-state spin defects.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of recent advancements in silicon carbide-based quantum photonics and discusses future research directions and technological challenges.

Findings

Silicon carbide hosts promising optically-addressable spin defects.

Recent progress in scalable quantum photonic device development.

Challenges remain in processing and integrating SiC for quantum applications.

Abstract

Optically-addressable solid-state spin defects are promising candidates for storing and manipulating quantum information using their long coherence ground state manifold; individual defects can be entangled using photon-photon interactions, offering a path toward large scale quantum photonic networks. Quantum computing protocols place strict limits on the acceptable photon losses in the system. These low-loss requirements cannot be achieved without photonic engineering, but are attainable if combined with state-of-the-art nanophotonic technologies. However, most materials that host spin defects are challenging to process: as a result, the performance of quantum photonic devices is orders of magnitude behind that of their classical counterparts. Silicon carbide (SiC) is well-suited to bridge the classical-quantum photonics gap, since it hosts promising optically-addressable spin defects and can be processed into SiC-on-insulator for scalable, integrated photonics. In this Perspective, we discuss recent progress toward the development of scalable quantum photonic technologies based on solid state spins in silicon carbide, and discuss current challenges and future directions.