1.On-chip steering of entangled photons in nonlinear photonic crystals
One promising technique for working toward practical photonic quantum technologies is to implement multiple operations on a monolithic chip, thereby improving stability, scalability and miniaturization. The on-chip spatial control of entangled photons will certainly benefit numerous applications, including quantum imaging, quantum lithography, quantum metrology and quantum computation. However, external optical elements are usually required to spatially control the entangled photons. Here we present the first experimental demonstration of on-chip spatial control of entangled photons, based on a domain-engineered nonlinear photonic crystal. We manipulate the entangled photons using the inherent properties of the crystal during the parametric downconversion, demonstrating two-photon focusing and beam-splitting from a periodically poled lithium tantalate crystal with a parabolic phase profile. These experimental results indicate that versatile and precise spatial control of entangled photons is achievable. Because they may be operated independent of any bulk optical elements, domain-engineered nonlinear photonic crystals may prove to be a valuable ingredient in on-chip integrated quantum optics.
H. Y. Leng, X. Q. Yu, Y. X. Gong, P. Xu*, Z. D. Xie, H. Jin, C. Zhang and S. N. Zhu Nature Commun. | 2, 429 (2011)
2.Compact Engineering of Path-Entangled Sources from a Monolithic Quadratic Nonlinear Photonic Crystal
An integrated realization of photonic entangled states becomes an inevitable tendency toward integrated quantum optics. Here we report the compact engineering of steerable photonic path-entangled states from a monolithic quadratic nonlinear photonic crystal. The crystal acts as a coherent beam splitter to distribute photons into designed spatial modes, producing the heralded single-photon and appealing beamlike two-photon path entanglement. We characterize the path entanglement by implementing quantum spatial beating experiments. Such a multifunctional entangled source can be further extended to the high-dimensional fashion and multiphoton level, which paves a desirable way to engineering miniaturized quantum light sources.
H. Jin, P. Xu*, X.W. Luo, H.Y. Leng, Y. X. Gong, W. J. Yu, M. L. Zhong, G. Zhao, and S. N. Zhu Phys. Rev. Lett. | 111, 023603 (2013)
3.On-Chip Generation and Manipulation of Entangled Photons Based on Reconfigurable Lithium-Niobate Waveguide Circuits
A consequent tendency toward high-performance quantum information processing is to develop the fully integrated photonic chip. Here, we report the on-chip generation and manipulation of entangled photons based on reconfigurable lithium-niobate waveguide circuits. By introducing a periodically poled structure into the waveguide circuits, two individual photon-pair sources with a controllable electro-optic phase shift are produced within a Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometer, resulting in a deterministically separated identical photon pair. The state is characterized by 92.9±0.9% visibility Hong-Ou-Mandel interference. The photon flux reaches ～1.4×107pairs nm-1 mW-1. The whole chip is designed to contain nine similar units to produce identical photon pairs spanning the telecom C and L band by the flexible engineering of nonlinearity. Our work presents a scenario for on-chip engineering of different photon sources and paves the way to fully integrated quantum technologies.
H. Jin, F. M. Liu, P. Xu*, J. L. Xia, M. L. Zhong, Y. Yuan, J.W. Zhou, Y. X. Gong, W. Wang, and S. N. Zhu Phys. Rev. Lett. | 113, 103601 (2014)
