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Tunable quantum interference using a topological source of indistinguishable photon pairs

Nature Photonics volume 15, pages 542–548 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Sources of quantum light, in particular correlated photon pairs that are indistinguishable for all degrees of freedom, are the fundamental resource for photonic quantum computation and simulation. Although such sources have been recently realized using integrated photonics, they offer limited ability to tune the spectral and temporal correlations between generated photons because they rely on a single component, such as a ring resonator. Here, we demonstrate a tunable source of indistinguishable photon pairs using dual-pump spontaneous four-wave mixing in a topological system comprising a two-dimensional array of resonators. We exploit the linear dispersion of the topological edge states to tune the spectral bandwidth (by about 3.5×), and thereby, to tune quantum interference between generated photons by tuning the two pump frequencies. We demonstrate energy−time entanglement and, using numerical simulations, confirm the topological robustness of our source. Our results could lead to tunable, frequency-multiplexed quantum light sources for photonic quantum technologies.

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Fig. 1: Schematic of the experimental setup.
Fig. 2: Tunability of the two-photon JSI.
Fig. 3: Indistinguishability of the generated photons.
Fig. 4: Energy−time entanglement between generated photons.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available on reasonable request. Correspondence should be addressed to S.M. (mittals@umd.edu).

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research AFOSR-MURI grant FA9550-16-1-0323, Office of Naval Research ONR-MURI grant N00014-20-1-2325, Army Research Laboratory grant W911NF1920181, and NSF grant PHY1820938. We thank Q. Quraishi for providing the nanowire detectors.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Sunil Mittal, Venkata Vikram Orre.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Joint Quantum Institute, NIST/University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Sunil Mittal, Venkata Vikram Orre & Mohammad Hafezi

  2. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and IREAP, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Sunil Mittal, Venkata Vikram Orre & Mohammad Hafezi

  3. Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

    Elizabeth A. Goldschmidt

  4. Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Mohammad Hafezi

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  1. Sunil Mittal
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  2. Venkata Vikram Orre
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  3. Elizabeth A. Goldschmidt
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  4. Mohammad Hafezi
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Contributions

S.M. and V.V.O. contributed equally. S.M. conceived and designed the experiment, and performed numerical simulations. V.V.O. and S.M. performed the measurements. E.A.G. contributed to source characterization. M.H. supervised the project. All authors contributed to analysing the data and writing the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sunil Mittal.

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Competing interests

A US provisional patent application (no. 63/028,468) has been filed based on the results reported in this manuscript.

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Peer review information Nature Photonics thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figures S1–S11, Supplementary discussion in sections S1–S11

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Mittal, S., Orre, V.V., Goldschmidt, E.A. et al. Tunable quantum interference using a topological source of indistinguishable photon pairs. Nat. Photon. 15, 542–548 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-021-00810-1

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