On-chip frequency combs and telecommunications signal processing meet quantum optics

Reimer, Christian and Zhang, Yanbing and Roztocki, Piotr and Sciara, Stefania and Cortés, Luis Romero and Islam, Mehedi and Fischer, Bennet and Wetzel, Benjamin and Cino, Alfonso and Chu, Sai T. and Little, Brent and Moss, David and Caspani, Lucia and Azaña, José and Kues, Michael and Morandotti, Roberto (2018) On-chip frequency combs and telecommunications signal processing meet quantum optics. Frontiers of Optoelectronics, 11 (2). pp. 134-147. ISSN 2095-2767 (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12200-018-0814-0)

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Abstract

Entangled optical quantum states are essential towards solving questions in fundamental physics and are at the heart of applications in quantum information science. For advancing the research and development of quantum technologies, practical access to the generation and manipulation of photon states carrying significant quantum resources is required. Recently, integrated photonics has become a leading platform for the compact and costefficient generation and processing of optical quantum states. Despite significant advances, most on-chip nonclassical light sources are still limited to basic bi-photon systems formed by two-dimensional states (i.e. qubits). An interesting approach bearing large potential is the use of the time or frequency domain to enabled the scalable onchip generation of complex states. In this manuscript, we review recent efforts in using on-chip optical frequency combs for quantum state generation and telecommunications components for their coherent control. In particular, the generation of bi- and multi-photon entangled qubit states has been demonstrated, based on a discrete time domain approach. Moreover, the on-chip generation of high-dimensional entangled states (quDits) has recently been realized, wherein the photons are created in a coherent superposition of multiple pure frequency modes. The timeand frequency-domain states formed with on-chip frequency comb sources were coherently manipulated via off-theshelf telecommunications components. Our results suggest that microcavity-based entangled photon states and their coherent control using accessible telecommunication infrastructures can open up new venues for scalable quantum information science.