High-quality photonic entanglement for wavelength-multiplexed quantum communication based on a silicon chip
F. Mazeas, M. Traetta, M. Bentivegna, F. Kaiser, D. Aktas, W. Zhang, C. A. Ramos, L. A. Ngah, T. Lunghi, É. Picholle, N. Belabas-Plougonven, X. Le Roux, É. Cassan, D. Marris-Morini, L. Vivien, G. Sauder, L. Labonté, S. Tanzilli · Optics Express · 2016
We report an efficient energy-time entangled photon-pair source based on four-wave mixing in a CMOS-compatible silicon photonics ring resonator. Thanks to suitable optimization, the source shows a large spectral brightness of 400 pairs of entangled photons /s/MHz for 500 μW pump power, compatible with standard telecom dense wavelength division multiplexers. We demonstrate high-purity energy-time entanglement, i.e., free of photonic noise, with near perfect raw visibilities (> 98%) between various channel pairs in the telecom C-band. Such a compact source stands as a path towards more complex quantum photonic circuits dedicated to quantum communication systems.