Fiber-based quantum entanglement technologies

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Quantum entanglement is a fascination of scientists. Optical fibre is a marvel of engineering. The marriage of the two will create a technological transformation the 21st century has yet to witness, if the past is any indication of the future. In the 60 years after the invention of laser, it has transformed from a laboratory curiosity to a necessity in everyday life. Indeed, the Internet and social media would not have been possible without lasers. Nor would they be possible without optical fibre. It was the marriage of the two, lasers and optical fibre, that created the revolution in telecommunications. Analogously, entangled photons will likely play an equally important role as lasers do in not too distant future. The "weird" correlation between two entangled particles, once described by Einstein as "spooky action at a distance," has the potential to be an extremely powerful resource for computing, communication, metrology, and beyond. Entanglement-based quantum cryptography, for example, utilizes the correlation of the photons sent to two remote parties and allows them to share a common set of random cryptographic keys. It guarantees the security of the keys since any eavesdropping attempt would result in a detectable deterioration of correlation. The correlation of the photons can also be used to achieve higher accuracy in metrology. To best utilize entangled photons as a technological resource, we propose here to use fibre-optics technology as a platform to create and manipulate quantum entanglement, and to demonstrate its practical applications. Built on our unique expertise of generating entangled photons in a specialty fibre - the periodically poled silica fibre, and the successful commercialization of the fibre-based entanglement source, we propose to develop several practical technologies using quantum entanglement. More specifically, we propose to develop more sophisticated quantum entanglement sources and better control over their physical properties, and then we will demonstrate how the variety of quantum entanglement these sources offer can be utilized to produce practical technologies in quantum cryptography and quantum metrology. Quantum technology will play an important role in the 21st century. By combining quantum entanglement with practical fiber-optic technologies, this proposal aims to take an important step forward in the development of quantum technology for practical applications.