Modular quantum photonics

Contact: Carlos Errando Herranz, Assistant Professor at TU Delft and PI at QuTech (c.errandoherranz@tudelft.nl)

Quantum photonics provides a promising route towards quantum communication, computing, and simulation. A quantum photonic system must consist of sources, tunable photonic elements, detectors, nonlinear elements, and memories. However, combining these into a scalable system has not been possible because of incompatibility of materials and devices. An approach towards solving that problem is to use nanomanipulators [1]. We want now to build on this method to make it more efficient and widely applicable to all the key modules using transfer printing [2].

There are several Master Thesis opportunities within this project. Examples are 1) developing a module library of high-quality materials and devices (such as color center chiplets in diamond and silicon, photonic crystals, and single-photon detectors), 2) designing and testing reconfigurable integrated photonics based on MEMS [3], and 3) building a quantum photonic system on top of a commercial photonic chip and characterizing it.

Such a system may enable thousands of interconnected qubits for quantum communication and quantum computing, and ultimately bring quantum technologies closer to applications.

Student profile: Independent, curious and creative, comfortable with experiments, hard-working.

Background: Electrical and mechanical engineering, computer science, physics, optics.

[1] N. H. Wan, et al., arXiv:1911.05265 [quant-ph] (2019)

[2] J. McPhillimy, et al., Opt. Express 26, 16679-16688 (2018)

[3] C. Errando-Herranz, et al., IEEE JSTQE 26, no. 2, 1-16 (2020)