A Gigahertz configurable silicon photonic integrated circuit nonlinear interferometer

Abstract

Low loss and high-speed processing of photons is important to photonic quantum information technologies. The speed with which quantum light generation can be modulated impacts the clock rate of photonic quantum computers, the data rate of quantum communication and applications of quantum enhanced radio-frequency sensors. Here we use lossy carrier depletion modulators in a silicon waveguide nonlinear interferometer to modulate photon pair generation probability at 1 gigahertz (GHz) without exposing the generated photons to the phase dependent parasitic loss of the modulators. The super sensitivity of nonlinear interferometers reduces power consumption compared to modulating the driving laser. This can be used for high-speed programmable nonlinearity in waveguide networks for quantum technologies and for optical quantum sensors.