Packaged Entanglement Chips for Cisco Quantum Labs

Excerpt from the Cisco Outshift Blog written by Reza Nejabati and Ramana Kompella:

One of the fundamental components in our architecture is our quantum network entanglement chip— a quantum networking device that creates pairs of photons that remain connected regardless of distance.

Developed in collaboration with UC Santa Barbara, our prototype: 

• Leverages spontaneous four-wave mixing in III-V semiconductor waveguides on a silicon wafer platform;
• Generates over one million useable entangled photon pairs per second per channel (up to 200 million pairs per second in the chip);
• Achieves as high as 99% fidelity while consuming less than 1 mW of power, at room temperature;
• Enables us to create arrays of entanglement sources on the same chip for massive multiplexing for high rate end-to-end and multi-user quantum networking making it the brightest chip scale source today; and
• Operates at 1550 nm telecom wavelengths, integrating with existing fiber infrastructure - a critical advantage for real-world deployment.

This breakthrough was in part made possible through academic collaboration with UC Santa Barbara. 

Professor Galan Moody, who worked with us, explains: “We’re excited to collaborate with Cisco to co-develop entanglement sources for their quantum network. Integrated photonics enables many sources to be combined onto a single chip, and by packaging these sources with optical fiber and electronic controls, a single device can boost the entanglement rates for many users on their quantum network.”

These PICs were developed and fabricated by QPL PhD student Josh Castro.