Developing Next-Generation Heralded Photon Pair Sources with Integrated Photonics

Heralded single photon sources (HSPS) on integrated photonic platforms present a promisingly scalable option for applications such as quantum computation and quantum communications. However, achieving the high heralding efficiencies and spectral purities required for computing comes at the cost of low brightness and hence reduced practicality; furthermore, no device has yet achieved a brightness high enough for long distance communication. HSPS in fact experience a trivariate trade-off between these three parameters, although this can be relaxed through careful source design considerations. The aim of this project is to develop 'next-generation' integrated HSPS that could either greatly improve one parameter while mitigating the trade-off with the others, or potentially
overcome the trivariate trade-off altogether. The latter may be considered by exploring photonic molecule architectures; while the former will be investigated by considering microring resonators (MRR) that incorporate p-n junctions (p-n MRR), with a goal of improving brightness by two-orders of magnitude compared to existing sources. This would require an output of roughly 1 billion photons/sec and would help pave the way for the next steps of high throughput photonic quantum computing and quantum communications applications, as well as making space-based communication more feasible.