Semiconductor Quantum Photonics

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Integrated photonics takes the advantages of integrated electronics, such as mass manufacture, reproducibility, stability, and compact sizing, and applies it to optical circuits fabricated on semiconductor wafers. It is an area of rapidly growing commercial interest (estimated market of $1.8 billion by 2022 [1]) led by large telecoms and datacomms companies such as Huawei, Cisco and Intel who already retail silicon photonics transceivers for data-centre and 5G applications. These advantages can be transferred to quantum photonic integrated circuits (PICs) which handle non-classical and entangled light to create practical quantum communications, computing and imaging devices. This project is complementary to our recently awarded Innovate UK project which will demonstrate the manufacturability of computationally designed photonic components to achieve higher performance, improved error tolerance and new functionalities. Devices will be fabricated via the CORNERSTONE facility. We will assess the devices with a custom-built test rig and an electron microscope to build a realistic model of the device in Lumerical. In the process we shall contribute to a UK capability for the commercialisation of PICs for quantum technologies. An avenue of research in Cardiff is for PICs to be functionalised with compound semiconductors, enabling efficient light generation, detection and manipulation on chip.