On-chip platforms for engineering photon-photon interactions and low-power photonic devices

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The intent of the proposed research is to develop on-chip platforms in which light-matter interactions are highly enhanced, which in turn can be used to engineer nonlinear interactions between single-photon or few-photon light pulses. While nonlinear light-matter interactions needed for light-based information processing become close to negligible in conventional materials at powers associated with individual photons, interactions between single photons can be achieved through optical non-linearities arising in so-called "quantum emitters". The platforms developed under this proposal will use such quantum-emitter based nonlinearities and enhance them with photonic nanostructures fabricated using semiconductor manufacturing techniques. The resulting systems will have small physical footprint, will easily interface with integrated electronic circuits, and will be utilized toward novel photonic devices for low-power information processing, as building blocks for scalable quantum information processing applications, as well as in studies of quantum-mechanical phenomena in condensed matter or atomic systems.***The proposed research will achieve its goals by pursuing the following two interrelated themes: ***1) Nonlinear quantum optics with on-chip waveguides containing mesoscopic ensembles of quantum emitters:***Ensembles of quantum emitters can offer significant advantages in implementing single-photon nonlinearities. These advantages include collective enhancement of light-matter interactions, robustness to noise and decoherence, and the ability to handle pulses containing multiple photons. The proposed research will explore quantum optics with ensembles of laser-cooled atoms confined inside on-chip hollow waveguides for applications such as optical transistors and memories, quantum non-demolition single-photon detectors, and ultra-stable lasers. ***2) Nonlinear quantum optics with individual laser-cooled atoms coupled to arrays of planar photonic-crystal nano-cavities : ***Because of the extremely small volume of photonic-crystal cavities, coupling laser-cooled atoms to these cavities can lead to a device capable of performing over a large bandwidth (~GHz) not limited by the natural linewidth (~MHz) of the atoms. Such performance will be comparable to current proof-of-principle devices based on cavities coupled to solid-state quantum emitters. However, since all the atoms are inherently identical unlike solid-state quantum emitters, such hybrid atom-cavity devices developed under this proposal can be scaled into multi-device on-chip architectures for classical information processing near fundamental power limits, as well as for quantum information processing, quantum sensing, and quantum simulations.*** Four doctoral students in total will be trained in the areas of photonics and quantum technologies during the period of the proposed research.**