Room-temperature on-chip generation of heralded single photons with switchable orbital angular momentum

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a silicon chip-based, room-temperature heralded single-photon source capable of generating and switching between 11 different orbital angular momentum modes, advancing high-dimensional quantum information processing.

Contribution

It introduces a novel integrated quantum source with switchable OAM modes on a silicon chip operating at room temperature, enabling practical high-dimensional quantum applications.

Findings

Successfully generated 11 OAM modes (l=2~6, -6~-1) at room temperature.

Achieved switching of OAM modes via thermo-optical effect.

Provides a scalable platform for high-dimensional quantum information processing.

Abstract

In quantum optics, orbital angular momentum (OAM) is very promising to achieve high-dimensional quantum states due to the nature of infinite and discrete eigenvalue, which is quantized by the topological charge of l. Here, a heralded single-photon source with switchable OAM modes is proposed and demonstrated on silicon chip. At room-temperature, the heralded single photons with 11 OAM modes (l=2~6, -6~-1) have been successfully generated and switched through thermo-optical effect. We believe that such an integrated quantum source with multiple OAM modes and operating at room-temperature would provide a practical platform for high-dimensional quantum information processing. Moreover, our proposed architecture can also be extended to other material systems to further improve the performance of OAM quantum source.