Testing multi-photon interference on a silicon chip

Multi-photon interference in large multi-port interferometers is key to linear optical quantum computing and in particular to boson sampling. Silicon photonics enables complex interferometric circuits with many components in a small footprint and has the potential to extend these experiments to larg...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2019-09
Main Authors: Bell, Bryn A, Thekkadath, Guillaume S, Ge, Renyou, Cai, Xinlun, Walmsley, Ian A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Circuits
Interference
Interferometers
Light sources
Photonics
Photons
Quantum computing
Silicon
Waveguides
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Multi-photon interference in large multi-port interferometers is key to linear optical quantum computing and in particular to boson sampling. Silicon photonics enables complex interferometric circuits with many components in a small footprint and has the potential to extend these experiments to larger numbers of interfering modes. However, loss has generally limited the implementation of multi-photon experiments in this platform. Here, we make use of high-efficiency grating couplers to combine bright and pure quantum light sources based on ppKTP waveguides with silicon circuits. We interfere up to 5 photons in up to 15 modes, verifying genuine multi-photon interference by comparing the results against various models including partial distinguishability between photons.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1909.02975