TY - JOUR
T1 - Nanomechanical single-photon routing
AU - Papon, Camille
AU - Zhou, Xiaoyan
AU - Nielsen, Henri Thyrrestrup
AU - Liu, Zhe
AU - Stobbe, Søren
AU - Schott, Rüdiger
AU - Wieck, Andreas D.
AU - Ludwig, Arne
AU - Lodahl, Peter
AU - Midolo, Leonardo
PY - 2019/4/29
Y1 - 2019/4/29
N2 - The active routing of photons using rapid reconfigurable integrated circuits is a key functionality for quantum-in-formation processing. Typical waveguide-based optical switches rely on the modulation of the refractive index, producing a modest variation of the phase of the optical fields. Mechanical motion of nanophotonic structures, on the contrary, can be tailored to produce a much larger effect, without introducing loss or emitter decoherence and operating at a speed matching the quantum memory storage time of the on-chip quantum emitter. Here we demonstrate a compact and low-loss nano-opto-electromechanical single-photon router, based on two coupled waveguides whose distance is adjusted on demand by an external voltage. We show controllable two-port routing of single photons emitted from quantum dots embedded in the same chip. We report a maximum splitting ratio >23 dB, insertion loss of 0.67 dB, and sub-microsecond response time. The device is an essential building block for constructing advanced quantum photonic architectures on-chip, towards, e.g., coherent multi-photon sources, deterministic photon– photon quantum gates, quantum-repeater nodes, or scalable quantum networks.
AB - The active routing of photons using rapid reconfigurable integrated circuits is a key functionality for quantum-in-formation processing. Typical waveguide-based optical switches rely on the modulation of the refractive index, producing a modest variation of the phase of the optical fields. Mechanical motion of nanophotonic structures, on the contrary, can be tailored to produce a much larger effect, without introducing loss or emitter decoherence and operating at a speed matching the quantum memory storage time of the on-chip quantum emitter. Here we demonstrate a compact and low-loss nano-opto-electromechanical single-photon router, based on two coupled waveguides whose distance is adjusted on demand by an external voltage. We show controllable two-port routing of single photons emitted from quantum dots embedded in the same chip. We report a maximum splitting ratio >23 dB, insertion loss of 0.67 dB, and sub-microsecond response time. The device is an essential building block for constructing advanced quantum photonic architectures on-chip, towards, e.g., coherent multi-photon sources, deterministic photon– photon quantum gates, quantum-repeater nodes, or scalable quantum networks.
U2 - 10.1364/OPTICA.6.000524
DO - 10.1364/OPTICA.6.000524
M3 - Journal article
SN - 2334-2536
VL - 6
SP - 542
EP - 530
JO - Optica
JF - Optica
IS - 4
ER -