Scalable and accessible photonics for next generation quantum devices

PROJECT COST:

418 836 $

PRIMA CONTRIBUTION:

184 836 $

PROJECT DETAILS:

Quantum technologies enable powerful capabilities, including high-performance information processing. Quantum optics offers an ideal platform for these technologies due to the robustness and flexibility of photons. However, the widespread commercial use of photonic quantum systems remains limited, as the efficiency of photon detection and processing decreases rapidly as the number of photons increases. As a result, while information processing power in semiconductor platforms improves with an increasing number of qubits, photonic systems face scalability challenges, leading to high implementation costs and confinement largely to laboratory environments.

The advancement and commercialization of quantum photonics require scalable, robust architectures and low-loss quantum information processing. This project aims to address these challenges by leveraging well-established telecommunications technologies and integrated chip-based infrastructures. Previous work by my team has demonstrated a viable solution by significantly increasing the amount of information encoded in a small number of photons using high-dimensional quantum encoding.

Building on this approach, the project pursues two main objectives: (1) the development of high-performance, compact sources of complex photonic quantum states; and (2) the implementation of photon-based quantum operations for non-classical information processing using low-loss, fiber-based components. Achieving these objectives is essential for enabling the deployment of quantum photonic systems beyond laboratory settings, including practical applications such as quantum-secure communications.