Indistinguishable photons from an artificial atom in silicon photonics

Lukasz Komza; Polnop Samutpraphoot; Mutasem Odeh; Yu-Lung Tang; Milena Mathew; Jiu Chang; Hanbin Song; Myung-Ki Kim; Yihuang Xiong; Geoffroy Hautier; Alp Sipahigil

doi:10.1038/s41467-024-51265-1

Indistinguishable photons from an artificial atom in silicon photonics

Nat Commun. 2024 Aug 13;15(1):6920. doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-51265-1.

Authors

Lukasz Komza^#^{1

2}, Polnop Samutpraphoot^#^{2

3}, Mutasem Odeh^{2

3}, Yu-Lung Tang^{1

2}, Milena Mathew^{2

3}, Jiu Chang³, Hanbin Song⁴, Myung-Ki Kim^{3

5}, Yihuang Xiong⁶, Geoffroy Hautier⁶, Alp Sipahigil^{7

8

9}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
² Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
³ Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
⁴ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
⁵ KU-KIST Graduate School of Converging Science and Technology, Korea University, Seoul, 02841, Republic of Korea.
⁶ Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College, 14 Engineering Dr, Hanover, NH, 03755, USA.
⁷ Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA. [email protected].
⁸ Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA. [email protected].
⁹ Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA. [email protected].

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Silicon is the ideal material for building electronic and photonic circuits at scale. Integrated photonic quantum technologies in silicon offer a promising path to scaling by leveraging advanced semiconductor manufacturing and integration capabilities. However, the lack of deterministic quantum light sources and strong photon-photon interactions in silicon poses a challenge to scalability. In this work, we demonstrate an indistinguishable photon source in silicon photonics based on an artificial atom. We show that a G center in a silicon waveguide can generate high-purity telecom-band single photons. We perform high-resolution spectroscopy and time-delayed two-photon interference to demonstrate the indistinguishability of single photons emitted from a G center in a silicon waveguide. Our results show that artificial atoms in silicon photonics can source single photons suitable for photonic quantum networks and processors.