Advances in photonics have made it possible to entangle photon pairs on a chip rather than using bulky optical equipment, which could greatly expand the scope of the technology. But the photons themselves still have to be generated by a conventional laser, says Michael Kues, a professor at the Leibniz University of Hannover in Germany. “You have everything on this small chip, but you still have this big laser,” he says. “That makes it kind of bulky and also not really mass-producible, and that limits scalability.”
In a new paper published 17 April in Nature Photonics, Kues and his colleagues unveil the first photonic chip that integrates all of the key components required to generate entangled photon pairs. Their approach relies on merging two different kinds of semiconductor technology to create a hybrid chip that can both generate laser light and convert that light into high-quality entangled photons. “This is now all in one tiny device smaller than a one euro coin,” says Kues.
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