April 2016
Spotlight Summary by Steven Rogers
Design and characterization of integrated components for SiN photonic quantum circuits
The field of quantum photonics is making leaps that may bear fruit in the form of practical technologies. In recent years, groups around the globe have intensely focused on solving many of the critical challenges necessary to achieving such an end. As with essentially any nascent field, these contributions have spanned an array of paradigms, materials, components and perspectives. A natural next step is to expand the focus - combining the most successful of these building blocks - in an effort to create aggregates where the sum is greater than the individual parts.
In this Optics Express article, Poot and coworkers detail their vision for a fully integrated chip to serve as a platform for linear optics quantum computation (LOQC). The key ingredients for LOQC include sources of highly pure single photons for encoding information (qubits), photonic circuitry to transport qubits and perform quantum gate operations, and single photon detectors of high efficiency to faithfully register events. Expanding upon their previous work in integrated phase shifters and single photon detectors, the authors present a rigorous study of their photonic circuitry, with emphasis placed on its role in the broader context of a fully integrated LOQC chip. Additionally, they outline the primary fabrication steps for achieving such a monolithic platform. They identify silicon nitride (SiN) as a material capable of LOQC, while also meeting the full fabrication requirements for their envisioned all-in-one quantum device. In particular, they present analysis and experimental results pertaining to the modeling, characterization and efficacy of the SiN photonic circuitry, highlighting details that are relevant to quantum optics. The article concludes with an experimental realization of a high fidelity controlled NOT (CNOT) circuit and the characterization of its scattering matrix. The CNOT gate is of extreme importance to quantum computation, due to its distinction as a member of the set of universal quantum gates, from which any arbitrary operation on a quantum computer may be performed. From the initial modeling steps through the final characterization, the authors have given significant attention to detail as well as insightful considerations for how each piece connects to full integration. Efforts of this sort may aid in the development of standards for quantum photonics, similar to the CMOS process flow in the micro/nanoelectronics industry.
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In this Optics Express article, Poot and coworkers detail their vision for a fully integrated chip to serve as a platform for linear optics quantum computation (LOQC). The key ingredients for LOQC include sources of highly pure single photons for encoding information (qubits), photonic circuitry to transport qubits and perform quantum gate operations, and single photon detectors of high efficiency to faithfully register events. Expanding upon their previous work in integrated phase shifters and single photon detectors, the authors present a rigorous study of their photonic circuitry, with emphasis placed on its role in the broader context of a fully integrated LOQC chip. Additionally, they outline the primary fabrication steps for achieving such a monolithic platform. They identify silicon nitride (SiN) as a material capable of LOQC, while also meeting the full fabrication requirements for their envisioned all-in-one quantum device. In particular, they present analysis and experimental results pertaining to the modeling, characterization and efficacy of the SiN photonic circuitry, highlighting details that are relevant to quantum optics. The article concludes with an experimental realization of a high fidelity controlled NOT (CNOT) circuit and the characterization of its scattering matrix. The CNOT gate is of extreme importance to quantum computation, due to its distinction as a member of the set of universal quantum gates, from which any arbitrary operation on a quantum computer may be performed. From the initial modeling steps through the final characterization, the authors have given significant attention to detail as well as insightful considerations for how each piece connects to full integration. Efforts of this sort may aid in the development of standards for quantum photonics, similar to the CMOS process flow in the micro/nanoelectronics industry.
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Article Information
Design and characterization of integrated components for SiN photonic quantum circuits
Menno Poot, Carsten Schuck, Xiao-song Ma, Xiang Guo, and Hong X. Tang
Opt. Express 24(7) 6843-6860 (2016) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF