Quantum photonics at telecom wavelengths based on lithium niobate waveguides

Olivier Alibart (1) , Virginia D 'Auria (1) , Marc de Micheli (1) , Florent Doutre (1) , Florian Kaiser (1) , Laurent Labonté (1) , Tommaso Lunghi (1) , Eric Picholle (1) , Sébastien Tanzilli (1)

1 LPMC - Laboratoire de physique de la matière condensée

Integrated optical components on lithium niobate play a major role in standard high-speed communication systems. Over the last two decades, after the birth and positioning of quantum information science, lithium niobate waveguide architectures have emerged as one of the key platforms for enabling photonics quantum technologies. Due to mature technological processes for waveguide structure integration, as well as inherent and efficient properties for nonlinear optical effects, lithium niobate devices are nowadays at the heart of many photon-pair or triplet sources, single-photon detectors, coherent wavelength-conversion interfaces, and quantum memories. Consequently, they find applications in advanced and complex quantum communication systems, where compactness, stability, efficiency, and interconnectability with other guided-wave technologies are required. In this review paper, we first introduce the material aspects of lithium niobate, and subsequently discuss all of the above mentioned quantum components, ranging from standard photon-pair sources to more complex and advanced circuits.

Mots clés: Quantum Communication; Integrated Quantum Photonics; Nonlinear Optics; Lithium Niobate Waveguides; Quantum Technologies

Domaines: Optique [physics.optics]; Physique Quantique [quant-ph]

Olivier Alibart, Virginia D 'Auria, Marc de Micheli, Florent Doutre, Florian Kaiser, et al.. Quantum photonics at telecom wavelengths based on lithium niobate waveguides. Journal of Optics, 2016, 18 (10), pp.104001. ⟨10.1088/2040-8978/18/10/104001⟩. ⟨hal-01315505v3⟩