Entanglement measurement of a coupled silicon microring photon pair source

Abstract

Using two-photon (Franson) interferometry, we measure the entanglement of photon pairs generated from an optically-pumped silicon photonic device consisting of a few coupled microring resonators. The pair-source chip operates at room temperature, and the InGaAs single-photon avalanche detectors (SPADs) are thermo-electrically cooled to 234K. Such a device can be integrated with other components for practical entangled photon-pair generation at telecommunications wavelengths.

Silicon photonic entangled photon-pair and heralded single photon generation with CAR > 12,000 and g^(2)(0) < 0006

“…Two fiber-coupled, polarization-maintaining, piezo-controlled DLI's, each with an FSR of 2.5 GHz and peak-to-valley extinction ratio approximately 25 dB were used in these measurements. Unlike in other experiments 19,31 , no active DLI stabilization was required, considerably simplifying the experimental requirements. Approximately the same number of counts were measured here in 5 seconds as took nearly 50 times longer in other experiments 19 .…”

Disorder and Functionality in Integrated Photonics (Project Report 0925399-Y1)

“…The principal focus of research during the first year (08/2009 -07/2010) was on developing models to study integrated photonics devices which can comprise several hundred individual elements in periodic structure, such as the coupled-resonator optical waveguide (CROW). Potential applications of this structure include efficient nonlinear optics [3]- [5], dispersion compensation, lasers [6] and quantum light generation [7]. In a collaboration with IBM, silicon microring CROWs of up to 235 coupled resonators were successfully fabricated and measured, and a good agreement was achieved between experiments and theory [8]- [10].…”

Scaling Properties of Silicon Microring CROWs (Project Report 0925399-Y3)

“…We continue to study and develop both the single-resonator and coupledresonator configurations for quantum light generation using spontaneous fourwave mixing [44]. The resonator-enhanced nonlinearity benefits the generation of entangled photon-pair and heralded single-photon generation using silicon photonics [18], [19], [45]. A single silicon microresonator can be monitored and controlled more easily [46] than a long CROW device and an optimized single silicon microresonator can also be useful for both nonlinear wavelength conversion [27] and photon-pair generation [47] with low pump powers.…”

“…Measurements made in this project were compared to earlier theoretical models [11]- [13]. CROWs can have many potential applications including low-power nonlinear optics [14]- [16], novel lasers [17] and generation of entangled photon pairs through spontaneous four-wave mixing (SFWM) [18]. Longer CROWs can be helpful in nonlinear optics [14] and quantum photonics [19].…”