Electrically pumped ultrabright entangled photons on chip

TL;DR

This paper presents a scalable, chip-integrated, electrically pumped entangled photon source with high brightness and fidelity, advancing quantum communication and metrology technologies.

Contribution

Demonstrates a novel hybrid integrated chip-scale polarization entangled photon source that is electrically pumped and free of post-selection.

Findings

Bandwidth of 73 nm achieved

Entanglement pair rate of 4.5×10^10 pairs/s/mW

Bell-state fidelity above 96% across modes

Abstract

Entangled photon sources (EPS) are essential for quantum science and technology. Despite advancements in integrated optical platforms like thin-film lithium niobate, a scalable, high-performance, chip-scale EPS has remained elusive. We address this by demonstrating an electrically pumped, post-selection-free polarization-EPS, achieved through hybrid integration of a distributed feedback laser with thin-film lithium niobate chip which integrates periodically poled lithium niobate waveguides, beam splitter, and polarization rotator combiner. By injecting current into the chip, we realize a high-performance EPS with a bandwidth of 73 nm and an entanglement pair generation rate of 4.5*10^10 pairs/s/mW. The polarization entanglement shows Bell-state fidelities above 96% across frequency-correlated modes. This compact, integrated EPS enables key applications, including high-speed quantum key distribution via wavelength division multiplexing, satellite-based quantum communication, and entanglement-based quantum metrology.