The ability to engineer photon emission and photon scattering is at the heart of modern photonics applications ranging from light harvesting, through novel compact light sources, to quantuminformation processing based on single photons. Nanophotonic waveguides are particularly well suited for such applications since they confine photon propagation to a 1D geometry thereby increasing the interaction between light and matter. Adding chiral functionalities to nanophotonic waveguides lead to new opportunities enabling integrated and robust quantum-photonic devices or the observation of novel topological photonic states. In a regular waveguide, a quantum emitter radiates photons in either of two directions, and photon emission and absorption are reverse processes. This symmetry is violated in nanophotonic structures where a non-transversal local electric field implies that both photon emission [1,2] and scattering [3] may become directional. Here we experimentally demonstrate that the internal state of a quantum emitter determines the chirality of single-photon emission in a specially engineered photonic-crystal waveguide. Single-photon emission into the waveguide with a directionality of more than 90% is observed under conditions where practically all emitted photons are coupled to the waveguide. Such deterministic and highly directional photon emission enables on-chip optical diodes, circulators operating at the single-photon level, and deterministic quantum gates. Based on our experimental demonstration, we propose an experimentally achievable and fully scalable deterministic photon-photon CNOT gate, which so far has been missing in photonic quantum-information processing where most gates are probabilistic [4]. Chiral photonic circuits will enable dissipative preparation of entangled states of multiple emitters [5], may lead to novel topological photon states [6,7], or can be applied in a classical regime to obtain highly directional photon scattering [8][9][10].Truly 1D photon-emitter interfaces are desirable for a range of applications in photonic quantum-information processing [11]. To this end, photonic-crystal waveguides constitute an ideal platform featuring on-chip integration with the ability to engineer the light-matter coupling. Recent experiments have achieved a coupling efficiency for a single quantum dot (QD) to a photoniccrystal waveguide in excess of 98%, thus constituting a deterministic 1D photon-emitter interface [12]. Standard photonic-crystal waveguides are mirror symmetric around the center of the waveguide and as a consequence the mode polarization is predominantly linear at the positions where light intensity is high. By designing a photonic-crystal waveguide that breaks this symmetry, modes that are circularly polarized at the field maxima can be engineered. We refer to this novel type of waveguide as a glide-plane waveguide (GPW), cf. Supplementary Material for further descriptions of the structural parameters. In a GPW, a QD with a circularly polarized transition dipole emits preferential...

Strong non-linear interactions between photons enable logic operations for both classical and quantum-information technology. Unfortunately, non-linear interactions are usually feeble and therefore all-optical logic gates tend to be inefficient. A quantum emitter deterministically coupled to a propagating mode fundamentally changes the situation, since each photon inevitably interacts with the emitter, and highly correlated many-photon states may be created. Here we show that a single quantum dot in a photonic-crystal waveguide can be used as a giant non-linearity sensitive at the single-photon level. The non-linear response is revealed from the intensity and quantum statistics of the scattered photons, and contains contributions from an entangled photon–photon bound state. The quantum non-linearity will find immediate applications for deterministic Bell-state measurements and single-photon transistors and paves the way to scalable waveguide-based photonic quantum-computing architectures.

We demonstrate a high-purity source of indistinguishable single photons using a quantum dot embedded in a nanophotonic waveguide. The source features a near-unity internal coupling efficiency and the collected photons are efficiently coupled off-chip by implementing a taper that adiabatically couples the photons to an optical fiber. By quasi-resonant excitation of the quantum dot, we measure a single-photon purity larger than 99.4 % and a photon indistinguishability of up to 94 ± 1 % by using p-shell excitation combined with spectral filtering to reduce photon jitter. A temperature-dependent study allows pinpointing the residual decoherence processes notably the effect of phonon broadening. Strict resonant excitation is implemented as well as another mean of suppressing photon jitter, and the additional complexity of suppressing the excitation laser source is addressed. The study opens a clear pathway towards the long-standing goal of a fully deterministic source of indistinguishable photons, which is integrated on a planar photonic chip.

Establishing a highly efficient photon-emitter interface where the intrinsic linewidth broadening is limited solely by spontaneous emission is a key step in quantum optics. It opens a pathway to coherent light-matter interaction for, e.g., the generation of highly indistinguishable photons, few-photon optical nonlinearities, and photon-emitter quantum gates. However, residual broadening mechanisms are ubiquitous and need to be combated. For solid-state emitters charge and nuclear spin noise are of importance, and the influence of photonic nanostructures on the broadening has not been clarified. We present near-lifetime-limited linewidths for quantum dots embedded in nanophotonic waveguides through a resonant transmission experiment. It is found that the scattering of single photons from the quantum dot can be obtained with an extinction of 66 ± 4%, which is limited by the coupling of the quantum dot to the nanostructure rather than the linewidth broadening. This is obtained by embedding the quantum dot in an electrically contacted nanophotonic membrane. A clear pathway to obtaining even larger single-photon extinction is laid out; i.e., the approach enables a fully deterministic and coherent photon-emitter interface in the solid state that is operated at optical frequencies.

Many photonic quantum information processing applications would benefit from a high brightness, fiber-coupled source of triggered single photons. Here, we present a fiber-coupled photonic-crystal waveguide single-photon source relying on evanescent coupling of the light field from a tapered out-coupler to an optical fiber. A two-step approach is taken where the performance of the tapered out-coupler is recorded first on an independent device containing an on-chip reflector. Reflection measurements establish that the chip-to-fiber coupling efficiency exceeds 80 %. The detailed characterization of a high-efficiency photonic-crystal waveguide extended with a tapered out-coupling section is then performed. The corresponding overall single-photon source efficiency is 10.9 % ± 2.3 %, which quantifies the success probability to prepare an exciton in the quantum dot, couple it out as a photon in the waveguide, and subsequently transfer it to the fiber. The applied out-coupling method is robust, stable over time, and broadband over several tens of nanometers, which makes it a highly promising pathway to increase the efficiency and reliability of planar chip-based single-photon sources.