Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Received 17 September 2014; revised 18 November 2014; accepted 20 November 2014 (Doc. ID 223278); published 26 January 2015
Entanglement is a fundamental resource in quantum information processing. Several studies have explored
the integration of sources of entangled states on a silicon chip, but the devices demonstrated so far require
millimeter lengths and pump powers of the order of hundreds of milliwatts to produce an appreciable
photon flux, hindering their scalability and dense integration. Microring resonators have been shown
to be efficient sources of photon pairs, but entangled state emission has never been proven in these devices.
Here we report the first demonstration, to the best of our knowledge, of a microring resonator capable of
emitting time-energy entangled photons. We use a Franson experiment to show a violation of Bells inequal-
ity by more than seven standard deviations with an internal pair generation exceeding 107 Hz. The source is
integrated on a silicon chip, operates at milliwatt and submilliwatt pump power, emits in the telecom band,
and outputs into a photonic waveguide. These are all essential features of an entangled state emitter for a
quantum photonic network. 2015 Optical Society of America
OCIS codes: (270.0270) Quantum optics; (250.5300) Photonic integrated circuits; (270.5565) Quantum communications; (230.5750)
Resonators; (120.3180) Interferometry.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1364/OPTICA.2.000088
Fig. 2. SFWM and coincidences. (a) Spectra of the SFWM experiment for five different coupled pump powers; signal and idler intensities are divided
by the corresponding pump power to underline the superlinear growth of the intensity. The slight difference in intensity between the two peaks is due to
slightly different coupling to the input/output bus of the signal and idler modes. For coupled pump powers above 1 mW, the pump wavelength was
retuned to compensate the red shift of the resonance due to the thermo-optic effect [22]. The horizontal scale is expanded around the signal and idler
resonances, while the complete absence of detected photons at the pump resonance confirms the excellent rejection of the transmitted pump intensity in
the setup. (b) Scaling of the internal generation rates of signal (blue squares) and idler (red circles) photons in SFWM, varying the coupled pump power.
The black dashed line is a guide to the eye proportional to the square of the pump power. The left axis indicates the photon flux measured at the sample
output. (c) Measured coincidence histogram for a coupled pump power P p 1 mW. The time resolution is 75 ps, and it is driven by the response time of
the detectors.
of the telecommunication c-band) for the pump and its second An instance of a histogram of the arrival times is shown in
nearest neighbor resonances for the signal and idler; this Fig. 2(c), where a distinct coincidence peak is visible over a
spectral distance is chosen to optimize filtering of the laser small background of accidental counts; this is a clear signature
background noise at the signal and idler frequencies. of the concurrent emission of the signalidler pairs. The 3.5 ns
FWM spectra are shown in Fig. 2(a): two clear peaks of offset is determined by the different path lengths of the signal
generated photons are evident at the signal and idler frequen- and idler photons. The coincidence measurements, for exper-
cies. It is important to notice that the pump laser is completely imental consistency, were taken using the same setup used to
filtered out, so that only spontaneously generated photons are measure the entanglement as described below, by masking one
detected. The parametric nature of the emission process is con- arm in each interferometer. The losses from the setup were
firmed by the superlinear increase of the generation rate with directly measured for each component, and amount to
increasing pumping powers: the quadratic behavior of the 31 dB for signal photons and 34 dB for idler photons, giving
generated beams is reported in Fig. 2(b), where we plot the a total loss of 64 dB on the coincidence rate. Almost all of these
estimated generation rate of photon pairs inside the ring res- losses, as discussed in Supplement 1, are outside the source and
onator together with the output rate [28]. The output rate are mainly given by the interferometers and the low quantum
was directly measured at the sample output, as detailed in efficiency of the detectors used in these experiments.
Supplement 1. The internal generation rate was estimated Accidental counts are primarily due to emitted pairs of
in the following way: we have directly measured a total inser- which only one photon is detected. The accidentals in the
tion loss of 7 dB for the sample. Due to the sample symmetry, coincidence curve mainly come from the detection of signal
we assume propagation and coupling losses from the ring res- and idler photons belonging to different pairs. As all emission
onator to the output fiber to be 3.5 dB. The internal gener- times are equivalent, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is also an
ation rate is then estimated from the flux measured at the indication of how likely it is for multiple pairs to be generated
output by subtracting the 3.5 dB. at the same time [29]. In our case the SNR is about 65 in
The generation rate can exceed 107 Hz; this is an extremely Fig. 2(c), and higher than 100 in some of the measurements
high rate, and will be beneficial for all experiments involving (see Supplement 1).
coincidence counting. The first step necessary to verify entan-
glement is to check that signal and idler photons are emitted in
pairs: this was assessed via a coincidence experiment, in which 4. ENTANGLEMENT TEST ON THE EMITTED
the relative times of arrival of idler and signal photons were PHOTON PAIRS
statistically analyzed [26]. The coincidence measurement The photon pairs are emitted simultaneously, but, because of
shown in Fig. 2(c) is obtained employing the setup described the continuous wave pumping, the emission time is indeter-
in Fig. 3(a) (detailed in Figure S1 of Supplement 1) by mask- minate to within the coherence time of the pump laser; this
ing the short arm of each interferometer. The total losses is several microseconds in our experiments. This systematic
undergone by the signal and idler in the coincidence experi- lack of information can lead to the pairs being time-energy
ment are 31 and 34 dB, respectively. entangled, as first pointed out by Franson [30]. In order to
Research Article Vol. 2, No. 2 / February 2015 / Optica 91
C 2C 0 1 cos ; (1) photons, operating at room temperature with unprecedented
capabilities. While ring resonators have long been studied
where C 0 is the detected coincidence rate measured by cover- theoretically as a source of quantum correlated states, and pairs
ing one arm in each interferometer. Since signal and idler pho- of photons emitted from spontaneous FWM in silicon ring
tons propagate in the same direction once they exit the sample, resonators have been detected, with this work the oft-quoted
the phase term in the above expression is given by the sum of promise that these devices could serve as sources of entangled
the phases acquired by the photons passing through the long photons has finally been fulfilled. We confirmed the violation
arms with respect to the short ones, S I , and is a of Bells inequality by more than seven standard deviations,
constant phase term dependent on the unknown actual lengths and we demonstrated the generation of time-energy entangled
of the interferometer arms. photon pairs particularly relevant for telecommunication ap-
The effect of varying is shown in Fig. 4; the full exper- plications. The source has incomparable operating character-
imental dataset is shown in Figs. S4 and S5 of Supplement 1. istics. Beyond the high purity of the emitted two-photon
While the side peaks, corresponding to distinguishable events, states, the spectral brightness per coupled pump power is re-
have heights that are independent of , the number of coinci- markable, at about 6 107 nm1 mW 2 s1 . This is more than
dence counts of the central peak oscillates between minima, four order of magnitudes larger than that reported for en-
close to zero events, and a maximum, close to four times tangled photon pairs emitted by long silicon waveguides
the height of the side peaks, as shown in Figs. 4(a)4(d). [13,15,23]. Even when compared to room temperature
The height of the central peak as a function of is summarized sources of entangled photons based on 2 nonlinearities, which
in Fig. 4(e). The trend is well fitted by a sinusoid curve of the are typically not CMOS compatible, the emission rate reported
type of Eq (1). For the raw data of Fig. 4(e), the best fit yields
p a here is remarkable. It is two orders of magnitude larger than
visibility V Meas 89.3% 2.6% (greather than 1 2), that obtained from GaAs-based waveguides [34] for 1 mW of
proving a violation of Bells inequality by 7.1 standard coupled pumping power and, for the given bandwidth, is of
deviations, and so we can conclude that we are generating the same order of magnitude as the emission rate of centimeter
time-energy entangled photon pairs [33]. long waveguides in periodically poled crystals [11] (see
Table 2), while having a footprint of a few hundred square
5. DISCUSSION micrometers. This small footprint has great advantages for scal-
The experiment was performed for various pumping powers P ability: all the existing know-how of integrated photonics can
(see Fig. S6 of Supplement 1 for the data), and the results are be directly applied with our source, and its micrometric size
summarized in Table 1. Bells inequality is violated in all cases, makes it ideal for integration with other devices on the same
and by more that 11 standard deviations in the best case. The chip, such as integrated filters for the pump and the routing of
visibility is limited by the background due to emission of signal and idler, for what integration strategies are well estab-
multiple couples and possibly other parasitic luminescent proc- lished. In particular, with quantum cryptography protocols in
esses, such as FWM and Raman scattering in the access wave- mind, one perspective for this work would be to take advantage
guide and in the optical fibers in the setup. The SNR, as of the silicon photonics industrial know-how to integrate the
expected, decreases with increasing pumping power, but it pump filtering and signal/idler demultiplexing stages on a
is always sufficiently high to lead to entanglement. It is worth single transmitter chip [35] and implement two receiver
noticing that the values of the measured visibility V Meas re- chips with integrated interferometers. Considering the
ported in the table are obtained by a single fit operation on receiving chips, the coherence time of the signal and idler
the raw data without performing any data correction, e.g., photons in this work corresponds to a coherence length of
without subtracting the dark counts of the detectors. Finally, about 1 mm in a silicon waveguide, and thus an arm unbalance
the maximum measurable visibility is limited by the first-order of some centimeters would be needed in the interferometers;
visibility of the interferometers, in our setup w 0.95, which this can be easily achieved on chip using spiraled waveguides.
gives the expected visibility V V Meas w (see the last column The main problem hindering this goal is, for the moment,
of Table 1). the unavailability of single-photon counters for the telecom
In conclusion, we have experimentally demonstrated a band working at room temperature and integrated on a silicon
microstructured, CMOS-compatible source of entangled chip.
A further advantage of the source reported here is that ring 5. C. H. Bennett and G. Brassard, Quantum cryptography: public key
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FUNDING INFORMATION narrowband source of photon pairs at optical telecommunication
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC); wavelengths using a type-II periodically poled lithium niobate wave-
guide, Opt. Express 15, 1276912776 (2007).
Fondazione Cariplo (2010-0523); MIUR (RBFR08XMVY); 12. E. Pomarico, B. Sanguinetti, N. Gisin, R. Thew, H. Zbinden, G.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENT K. Shimizu, K. Yamada, Y. Tokura, and H. Takesue, A
We acknowledge the technical staff of the James Watt monolithically integrated polarization entangled photon pair source
on a silicon chip, Sci. Rep. 2, 817 (2012).
Nanofabrication Centre at Glasgow University. J. E. Sipe ac-
14. L. Olislager, J. Safioui, S. Clemmen, K. P. Huy, W. Bogaerts, R.
knowledges support from the Natural Sciences and Engineer- Baets, P. Emplit, and S. Massar, Silicon-on-insulator integrated
ing Research Council of Canada. M. J. Strain and M. Sorel source of polarization-entangled photons, Opt. Lett. 38,
acknowledge support from the EPSRC, UK. 19601962 (2013).
15. K. Harada, H. Takesue, H. Fukuda, T. Tsuchizawa, T. Watanabe, K.
Yamada, Y. Tokura, and S. Itabashi, Generation of high-purity
See Supplement 1 for supporting content. entangled photon pairs using silicon wire waveguide, Opt. Express
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