Inverse design of integrated photonic chips
Project Level: Honours, Masters, PhD
Light based quantum information processing relies on ability to generate, manipulate and detect single- and entangled-photons states in an efficient and repeatable fashion. Currently, there are many competing processes for generating single- and entangled-photons, the most common being spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC) and spontaneous four-wave mixing (SFWM) in nonlinear materials and quantum dots (QDs). For many sources, photonic integrated circuits provide a path towards generating entangled states consisting of many photons through multiplexing of many individual sources.
Silicon nitride (Si3N4) is a CMOS-compatible material which has gained significant interest due to its nonlinear properties and low propagation loss across a wide range of optical wavelengths. Through nanofabrication techniques, optical waveguides hundreds of nanometres wide can guide and manipulate the photons with minimal loss, making them an ideal platform for interfacing with a wide range of single- and entangled photon sources. This project aims to design and test integrated optical components in silicon nitride necessary for large-scale on-chip quantum information processing. In particular, it will focus on the development of high efficiency grating couplers using inverse design methods for interfacing with single- and entangled photon sources.
