Work

Room-temperature photonic quantum computing in integrated silicon photonics with germanium–silicon single-photon avalanche diodes

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: Most, if not all, photonic quantum computing (PQC) relies upon superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) typically based on niobium nitride (NbN) operated at a temperature <4 K. This paper proposes and analyzes 300 K waveguide-integrated germanium–silicon (GeSi) single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) based on the recently demonstrated normal-incidence GeSi SPADs operated at room temperature, and shows that their performance is competitive against that of NbN SNSPDs in a series of metrics for PQC with a reasonable time-gating window. These GeSi SPADs become photon-number-resolving avalanche diodes (PNRADs) by deploying a spatially-multiplexed M-fold-waveguide array of M GeSi SPADs. Using on-chip waveguided spontaneous four-wave mixing sources and waveguided field-programmable interferometer mesh circuits, together with the high-metric SPADs and PNRADs, high-performance quantum computing at room temperature is predicted for this PQC architecture.

Source: APL Quantum

DOI: 10.1063/5.0219035

Authors: Neil Na, Chou-Yun Hsu, Erik Chen, Richard Soref

Institution: University of Massachusetts Boston

Language: English

Topic: Photonic and Optical Devices

Subfield: Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Field: Engineering

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: diamond

Funder: U.S. Air Force

Awards: G7090116110, G7644776560