Organic Rare-Earth Single Photon Sources for Quantum Information Technology

Quantum information technologies (QITs) will produce a revolutionary change in our approach to computation, communication, and information security. The ability to integrate quantum technology onto a scalable platform, to make a quantum integrated circuit, is the holy-grail, and currently photonic approaches look highly promising as they can operate at room temperature and utilise modern photonic integrated circuit (PIC) technologies. However, all photonic approaches to QIT require external single photon sources, which currently rely on parametric down-conversion of photons; this is expensive, bulky, requires precise optical fibre coupling to the PIC, and hugely limits the complexity that can be achieved. This proposal seeks to demonstrate an ultra-low power single photon emitter (SPE) source that can be directly integrated into photonic integrated circuits (PICs) and which can be electrically pumped. This is a transformative technology that will allow for the integration of numerous SPEs directly into waveguides on PICs and hence lead to scalable quantum processors that operate at room temperature.