Integrated Orbital Angular Momentum Quantum Photonics

Harnessing the quantum mechanical properties of light is an appealing approach to developing future quantum technologies for applications in communications, sensing, simulation and computation. Integrated quantum photonics waveguide circuits and orbital angular momentum are two promising but disparate fields of quantum photonic research that hold great potential for the development of future quantum photonic technologies. Integrated quantum photonic (IQP) waveguide circuits control and manipulate light propagating within mm-sized waveguide circuits, whereas the orbital angular moment (OAM) degree-of-freedom of the photon enables efficient communication of quantum information through the generation of high-dimensional entangled qu-dits propagating in free-space.

This research project aims to merge these two seemingly incompatible technologies to realised integrated quantum photonic waveguide circuits that can generate, manipulate and detect OAM states of light for chip-to-chip transfer of quantum information. This new integration technology will harness the advantages of both IQP and OAM to develop new applications in quantum communications, distributed quantum information processing, generation of high-dimensional entanglement and hyper-entanglement, quantum key distribution and the investigation of fundamental science.

This technology will significantly impact the specific fields of OAM, integrated quantum photonics and quantum photonics in general, as it will provide new concepts and new tools for the development of advanced and novel applications. The ultimate long term and socio-economic impacts will be broad and far-reaching, with anticipated impacts in areas including information security, new sensing and diagnostic tools and information processing. One major area of impact will likely be in the development of quantum secure communications for mobile devices, where these small and compact IOAM devices (2-3 orders of magnitude smaller than conventional approaches) will provide free-space chip-to-chip quantum communications channels with enhanced security and reference-frame independent behaviour. Another important application could be in the generation of large high-dimensional entangled and hyper-entangled quantum states for use as a resource in distributed quantum computing. Other potential applications could be in quantum sensing by exploiting the rotating phase properties of OAM and high-dimensional entanglement, as well as for investigations into new quantum protocols and fundamental science.

Information security is of growing concern in todays society, and quantum secure communications technologies will provide a level of security beyond those of todays 'classical' information systems. The development of new quantum technologies will deliver not just information security but ultra-precise sensing, and computation power beyond the limits of classical computers enabling the simulation of complex systems for the development of new materials, clean energy devices and pharmaceutics.