Scientists use thin film nanophotonic devices to generate “ultra wideband” entangled photon bandwidth

Researchers at the Qiang Lin Laboratory at the University of Rochester have utilized thin film nanophotonic devices to generate a record breaking "ultra wideband" entangled photon bandwidth. Engineers have achieved unprecedented bandwidth and brightness on chip sized nanophotonic devices. Researchers at the University of Rochester have utilized this phenomenon to generate an incredible bandwidth by using a thin film nanophotonic device they described in the Physical Review Letters.

Quantum entanglement, also known as the "long-distance ghost operation" mentioned by Einstein, occurs when two quantum particles are connected to each other, even if they are millions of miles apart. Any observation of one particle will affect another particle, just as they are communicating with each other. When this entanglement involves photons, interesting possibilities arise, including the frequency of entangled photons, whose bandwidth can be controlled.

This breakthrough may result in:

Improve the sensitivity and resolution of metrology and sensing experiments, including spectroscopy, nonlinear microscopy, and quantum optical coherence tomography imaging.

Higher dimensional information encoding in quantum networks for information processing and communication

"This work represents a significant leap in generating ultra wideband quantum entanglement on nanophotonic chips. It demonstrates the power of nanotechnology for developing quantum devices for future communication, computing, and sensing," said Qiang Lin, a professor of electronics and computer engineering.

The thin film lithium niobate nanophotonic device created by Qiang Lin's laboratory uses a single waveguide with electrodes on both sides. The lead author Usman Javid said that the diameter of block devices can reach several millimeters, while the thickness of thin film devices is 600 nanometers - their cross-sectional area is more than one million times smaller than that of block crystals. This makes the propagation of light extremely sensitive to the size of the waveguide.

Javid said that the device is ready for deployment in the experiment, but only in the laboratory environment. In order to be used commercially, a more effective and cost-effective manufacturing process is needed. Although lithium niobate is an important material based on light technology, its manufacturing is still in its early stages and it will take some time to mature to economic significance.

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