Electro-optic routing of photons from a single quantum dot in photonic integrated circuits
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Abstract
Recent breakthroughs in solid-state photonic quantum technologies enable the generation and detection of single photons with near-unity efficiency as required for a range of photonic quantum technologies. The lack of methods to simultaneously generate and control photons within the same chip, however, is a main obstacle to achieving efficient multi-qubit gates and to harness the advantages of chip-scale quantum photonics. Here we propose and demonstrate an integrated voltage-controlled phase shifter based on the electro-optic effect in suspended photonic waveguides with embedded quantum emitters. The phase control allows the building of a compact Mach-Zehnder interferometer with two orthogonal arms, taking advantage of the anisotropic electro-optic response in gallium arsenide. Photons emitted by single self-assembled quantum dots can be actively routed into the two outputs of the interferometer. These results, together with the observed sub-microsecond response time, constitute a significant step towards chip-scale single-photon-source de-multiplexing, fiber-loop boson sampling, and linear optical quantum computing.