Scalable and accessible photonics for next-generation quantum networks

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Technology based on quantum mechanics can enable high-performance information processing, future-proof secure communications, and highly sensitive metrology. Quantum optics, thanks to photons' robustness, versatility and long coherence times, provides the ideal platform for these realizations. However, photons are still not widely used in commercial applications as their detection probability (and thus their detection/processing rate) decreases exponentially with a growing number of photons in the quantum state. Thus, while information processing power for solid-state platforms improves with a larger number of qubits (two-level systems), it degrades in photonics, making realizations mostly lab-confined and expensive. Extending and commercializing quantum photonics also necessitates robust, yet scalable optical systems, as well as low-loss quantum information processing. This Discovery project aims to address these urgent needs by making use of well-established telecommunications and chip-based infrastructures, while expanding the extremely successful research lines I have developed at INRS-EMT in integrated nonlinear and quantum optics. Specifically, my team has demonstrated a route to overcome scaling issues by greatly increasing the information content stored in only a few photons through using high-dimensional (qudit, i.e. the d-level extension of a qubit) state encoding. For N photons, such qudits have an information capacity that scales as d^N, thus enabling high processing powers and detection efficiencies with a low photon number. The proposed project, comprised of two main parts, is a timely capitalization on the momentum of these recent achievements: (1) We will develop high-performance and low-footprint sources of complex photon states, investigating both well-established and newly-introduced materials. Quantum information processing implemented in scalable, low-loss, fiber-based components (e.g. interferometers, modulators) will be studied to achieve complex, yet accessible, photon-based operations. The development of these photon generation and manipulation blocks, targeted in practical and commercializable platforms, will be critical in enabling the deployment of these systems in out-of-the-lab applications (e.g. quantum secure communications). (2) In analogy to future quantum telecommunications networks, where photons propagate and interfere, the injection of photons into programmable fiber-loops (i.e. synthetic lattice structures) will be studied to gain new insights into how quantum states behave in commercial systems which feature much higher costs. Investigating specifically how e.g. quantum state information capacities change with complex propagation will establish important know-how for future network and quantum state design. Our Discovery program will reinforce the strong Canadian presence we helped establish in integrated nonlinear and non-classical photonics, towards commercializable and affordable quantum technologies.