Ultrabright Entangled-Photon-Pair Generation from an AlGaAs-On-Insulator Microring Resonator

Entangled-photon pairs are an essential resource for quantum-information technologies. Chip-scale sources of entangled pairs have been integrated with various photonic platforms, including silicon, nitrides, indium phosphide, and lithium niobate, but each has fundamental limitations that restrict th...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Trevor J. Steiner, Joshua E. Castro, Lin Chang, Quynh Dang, Weiqiang Xie, Justin Norman, John E. Bowers, Galan Moody
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: American Physical Society 2021-03-01
Series:PRX Quantum
Online Access:http://doi.org/10.1103/PRXQuantum.2.010337
Description
Summary:Entangled-photon pairs are an essential resource for quantum-information technologies. Chip-scale sources of entangled pairs have been integrated with various photonic platforms, including silicon, nitrides, indium phosphide, and lithium niobate, but each has fundamental limitations that restrict the photon-pair brightness and quality, including weak optical nonlinearity or high waveguide loss. Here, we demonstrate a novel ultralow-loss AlGaAs-on-insulator platform capable of generating time-energy entangled photons in a Q>1 million microring resonator with nearly 1000-fold improvement in brightness compared to existing sources. The waveguide-integrated source exhibits an internal generation rate greater than 20×10^{9} pairs s^{−1}mW^{−2}, emits near 1550 nm, produces heralded single photons with >99% purity, and violates Bell’s inequality by more than 40 standard deviations with visibility >97%. Combined with the high optical nonlinearity and optical gain of AlGaAs for active component integration, these are all essential features for a scalable quantum photonic platform.
ISSN:2691-3399