Top: High-dimensional color-entangled photon states from a photonic chip, manipulated and transmitted via telecommunications systems. Left: Photonic chip including a nonlinear microgravity, used to generate color-entangled photon pairs. Right: Photonic chip connected to optical fiber, allowing the quantum state manipulation with standard telecommunications components. Credit: Michael Kues (top image) and INRS University
INRS university researchers have achieved a breakthrough in a light-weight photonic system created using on-chip devices and off-the-shelf telecommunications components. Previous advances in established technologies for the telecommunications sector were targeted for the manipulation of classical signals. This research is a game-changer in that is can be applied and immediately enable fundamental investigations of high-dimensional quantum state characteristics, applications in large-alphabet fibre-based quantum communications, and the future development of frequency-domain, high-dimensional quantum logic gates and other applications. In the very near future, researchers around the world will be able to incorporate and move this technology forward, enabling a leap in the development of practical quantum applications.
Paper Published in Nature
Professor Roberto Morandotti, who leads the INRS research team, demonstrates that photons can become an accessible and powerful quantum resource when generated in the form of color-entangled quDits. The paper published in Nature, confirms the realization of a quantum system with at least one hundred dimensions using this approach. The technology developed is readily extendable to create two-quDit systems with more than 9,000 dimensions (corresponding to 12 qubits and beyond, comparable to the state of the art in significantly more expensive/complex platforms).
The use of the frequency domain
The use of the frequency domain for such quantum states enables their easy transmission and manipulation in optical fiber systems. “By merging the fields of quantum optics and ultrafast optical processing, we have shown that high-dimensional manipulation of these states is indeed possible using standard telecommunications elements like modulators and frequency filters,” said telecommunications system expert Professor José Azaña, co-supervisor of the conducted research.
