PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

15-Dec-2014

Contact: Ioana Patringenaru ipatrin@eng.ucsd.edu 858-822-0899 University of California - San Diego @UCSanDiego

A team of researchers from the University of California, San Diego have demonstrated a way to emit and control quantum light generated using a chip made from silicon--one of the most widely used materials for modern electronics.

The UC San Diego researchers recently described their new device's performance online in the journal Nature Communications, available via Open Access .

The researchers say practical applications of quantum optics will seem more feasible if devices for generating and controlling these photons can be manufactured using conventional materials from the semiconductor industry such as silicon. These devices could have applications in secure communications, precise measurements of motion or shape, and sensing using ultra-low levels of light.

For instance, the researchers suggest that their silicon pair-generation chip could be used as part of a more complicated "quantum transceiver" module, which would eventually integrate a controllable photon source with a sensitive photon detector in a single package.

"Optical transceivers have revolutionized data communications, and tens of millions of these devices are used to send billions of bits of data all over the internet and inside data centers every second," said Shayan Mookherjea, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. "But these transceivers contain lasers that are made using compound semiconductors, not silicon--which would be more manufacturable and cheaper.

The fact that silicon can be used to make a quantum photonic pair source, and that its spectral properties can be fine-tuned easily is exciting from a technological point of view."

"Silicon is known to be a poor light-emitting material--there is no silicon diode laser, for example, despite many decades of research," added Mookherjea. "However, if you want to make a chip that emits quantum light such as pairs of single photons which are entangled in some quantum mechanical properties and you want to do it at room temperature so that the chip can be widely used, then it turns out that silicon is actually quite a good material for generating photons."

Continued here:

Researchers generate tunable photon-pair spectrum using room-temperature quantum optics silicon chip