Researchers control individual light quanta at very high speed
A group of researchers from Germany and Spain has succeeded in controlling individual light quanta to an extremely high degree of precision
In Nature Communications, the researchers show how they switch individual frequencies on a chip back and forth between two outputs using sound waves
For the first time, this method can be used for acoustic quantum technologies or complex integrated photonic networks
Modern communication uses light waves and sound waves. While glass fibers with laser light from the World Wide Web, nanoscale sound waves on chips process signals
One of the most pressing questions is how these technologies can be extended to quantum systems, to build up secure quantum communication networks
Our team has succeeded in generating individual photons on a chip the size of a thumbnail and then controlling them with unprecedented precision using sound waves, he says.
The functional principle of our chip was known to us as regards conventional laser light but now, using light quanta, we have succeeded in making the long-wished-for breakthrough
The researchers fabricated a chip that has conducting paths for light quanta. They are 30 times thinner than a human hair. This chip contained quantum light sources
These quantum dots, just a few nanometers in size, are islands inside the waveguides which emit light as individual photons
Because the quantum dots are included in our chip, we don't have to use complicated methods to generate individual photons from another source.
The researchers consider their results to be a milestone on the way towards hybrid quantum technologies, as they combine three different quantum systems:
quantum light sources in the form of quantum dots, the light quanta created, and the quantum particles in the soundwave
The hybrid quantum chips were designed at the University of Valencia and manufactured at the Paul Drude Institute of Solid-State Electronics using quantum dots from the Technical University of Munich