Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Chip-to-chip quantum teleportation and multi-photon entanglement in silicon

Nature Physics volume 16, pages 148–153 (2020)Cite this article

Subjects

An Author Correction to this article was published on 24 February 2020

This article has been updated

Abstract

Integrated optics provides a versatile platform for quantum information processing and transceiving with photons1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8. The implementation of quantum protocols requires the capability to generate multiple high-quality single photons and process photons with multiple high-fidelity operators9,10,11. However, previous experimental demonstrations were faced by major challenges in realizing sufficiently high-quality multi-photon sources and multi-qubit operators in a single integrated system4,5,6,7,8, and fully chip-based implementations of multi-qubit quantum tasks remain a significant challenge1,2,3. Here, we report the demonstration of chip-to-chip quantum teleportation and genuine multipartite entanglement, the core functionalities in quantum technologies, on silicon-photonic circuitry. Four single photons with high purity and indistinguishablity are produced in an array of microresonator sources, without requiring any spectral filtering. Up to four qubits are processed in a reprogrammable linear-optic quantum circuit that facilitates Bell projection and fusion operation. The generation, processing, transceiving and measurement of multi-photon multi-qubit states are all achieved in micrometre-scale silicon chips, fabricated by the complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor process. Our work lays the groundwork for large-scale integrated photonic quantum technologies for communications and computations.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Microresonator-enhanced multi-photon multi-qubit quantum devices in silicon.
Fig. 2: Photon pair generation in an array of microresonator nonlinear sources.
Fig. 3: Programmable linear-optic quantum circuits for Bell projection and fusion operation.
Fig. 4: Chip-to-chip quantum teleportation and multi-photon multi-qubit entanglement.

Data availability

The data represented in Figs. 2–4 are available as source data in the Supplementary Information. All other data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Code availability

The computer code used for data analysis is available on request from the corresponding author.

Change history

References

  1. Politi, A., Cryan, M. J., Rarity, J. G., Yu, S. & O’Brien, J. L. Silica-on-silicon waveguide quantum circuits. Science 320, 646–649 (2008).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  2. Metcalf, B. J. et al. Quantum teleportation on a photonic chip. Nat. Photon. 8, 770–774 (2014).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  3. Harris, N. C. et al. Quantum transport simulations in a programmable nanophotonic processor. Nat. Photon. 11, 447–452 (2017).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  4. Silverstone, J. W. et al. Qubit entanglement between ringresonator photon-pair sources on a silicon chip. Nat. Commun. 6, 7948 (2015).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  5. Reimer, C. et al. Generation of multiphoton entangled quantum states by means of integrated frequency combs. Science 351, 1176–1180 (2016).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  6. Wang, J. et al. Multidimensional quantum entanglement with large-scale integrated optics. Science 360, 285–291 (2018).

    Article  ADS  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  7. Zhang, M. et al. Generation of multiphoton entangled quantum states with a single silicon nanowire. Light Sci. Appl. 8, 41 (2019).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  8. Adcock, J. C., Vigliar, C., Santagati, R., Siverstone, J. & Thompson, M. Programmable four-photon graph states on a silicon chip. Nat. Commun. 10, 3528 (2019).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  9. Knill, E., Laflamme, R. & Milburn, G. J. A scheme for efficient quantum computation with linear optics. Nature 409, 46–52 (2000).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  10. Nielsen, M. A. Optical quantum computation using cluster states. Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 040503 (2004).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  11. Pirandola, S., Eisert, J., Weedbrook, C., Furusawa, A. & Braunstein, S. L. Advances in quantum teleportation. Nat. Photon. 9, 641–652 (2015).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  12. Valivarthi, R. et al. Quantum teleportation across a metropolitan fibre network. Nat. Photon. 10, 676–680 (2016).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  13. Ren, J.-G. et al. Ground-to-satellite quantum teleportation. Nature 549, 70–73 (2017).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  14. Gottesman, D. & Chuang, I. L. Demonstrating the viability of universal quantum computation using teleportation and single-qubit operations. Nature 402, 390–393 (1999).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  15. Wehner, S., Elkouss, D. & Hanson, R. Quantum internet: a vision for the road ahead. Science 362, eaam9288 (2018).

    Article  ADS  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  16. Wang, J. et al. Integrated photonic quantum technologies. Nat. Photon. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-019-0532-1 (2019).

  17. Grice, W., U’Ren, A. & Walmsley, I. Eliminating frequency and space–time correlations in multiphoton states. Phys. Rev. A 64, 063815 (2001).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  18. Paesani, S. et al. Generation and sampling of quantum states of light in a silicon chip. Nat. Phys. 15, 925–929 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Vernon, Z. et al. Truly unentangled photon pairs without spectral filtering. Opt. Lett. 42, 3638–3641 (2017).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  20. Vernon, Z., Liscidini, M. & Sipe, J. E. No free lunch: the tradeoff between heralding rate and efficiency in microresonatorbased heralded single photon sources. Opt. Lett. 41, 788–791 (2016).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  21. Grassani, D. et al. Micrometer-scale integrated silicon source of time-energy entangled photons. Optica 2, 88–94 (2015).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  22. Faruque, I. I., Sinclair, G., Bonneau, D., Rarity, J. G. & Thompson, M. G. On-chip quantum interference with heralded photons from two independent micro-ring resonator sources in silicon photonics. Opt. Express 26, 20379–20395 (2018).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  23. Bergamasco, N., Menotti, M., Sipe, J. E. & Liscidini, M. Generation of path-encoded Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger states. Phys. Rev. Appl. 8, 054014 (2017).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  24. Ding, Y., Peucheret, C., Ou, H. & Yvind, K. Fully etched apodized grating coupler on the SOI platform with −0.58 dB coupling efficiency. Opt. Lett. 39, 5348–5350 (2014).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  25. Wang, J. et al. Chip-to-chip quantum photonic interconnect by path-polarization interconversion. Optica 3, 407–413 (2016).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  26. Greenberger, D. M., Horne, M. A., Shimony, A. & Zeilinger, A. Bell’s theorem without inequalities. Am. J. Phys. 58, 1131–1143 (1990).

    Article  ADS  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  27. Bourennane, M. et al. Experimental detection of multipartite entanglement using witness operators. Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 087902 (2004). (8).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  28. Ma, Z.-H. et al. Measure of genuine multipartite entanglement with computable lower bounds. Phys. Rev. A 83, 062325 (2011).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  29. Bavaresco, J. et al. Measurements in two bases are sufficient for certifying high-dimensional entanglement. Nat. Phys. 14, 1032–1037 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Kaneda, F. & Paul, K. High-efficiency single-photon generation via large-scale active time multiplexing. Sci. Adv. 5, eaaw8586 (2019).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  31. Tóth, G. & Apellaniz, I. Quantum metrology from a quantum information science perspective. J. Phys. A 47, 424006 (2014).

    Article  ADS  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank G.J. Mendoza and D. Bonneau for useful discussions. We thank W.A. Murray, M. Loutit, E. Johnston, J.W. Silverstone and L. Kling for experimental assistance. We acknowledge support from the National Key R&D Program of China (2019YFA0308700, 2018YFB1107205), the Natural Science Foundation of China (nos 61975001, 61590933, 11527901 and 11825402), Beijing Natural Science Foundation (Z190005), Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences (Y18G21) and Key R&D Program of Guangdong Province (2018B030329001). D.L., I.I.F., J.G.R. and M.G.T. acknowledge support from UK Quantum Technology Hub for Quantum Communication Technologies funded by EPSRC: EP/M013472/1; programme grant no. EP/L024020/1. Y.D. acknowledges support from Denmark SPOC (DNRF123), Villum Fonden, QUANPIC (00025298). I.I.F. acknowledges support from the FP7 Marie Curie Initial Training Network PICQUE (608062). M.H. acknowledges support from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) through the START project (Y879-N27) and the joint Czech–Austrian project MultiQUEST (I 3053-N27, GF17-33780L). M.M. acknowledges support from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC; EP/P024114/1) and the QuantERA ERA-NET co-fund (FWF Project I3773-N36). K.R. acknowledges support from QuantERA. J.L.O. acknowledges a Royal Society Wolfson Merit Award and a Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies. M.G.T. acknowledges support from a European Research Council (ERC) starter grant (ERC-2014-STG 640079) and an EPSRC Early Career Fellowship (EP/K033085/1).

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Daniel Llewellyn, Yunhong Ding, Imad I. Faruque.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Quantum Engineering Technology Labs, H. H. Wills Physics Laboratory and Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

    Daniel Llewellyn, Imad I. Faruque, Stefano Paesani, Raffaele Santagati, Gary F. Sinclair, John G. Rarity, Jianwei Wang & Mark G. Thompson

  2. Department of Photonics Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark

    Yunhong Ding, Davide Bacco, Karsten Rottwitt & Leif K. Oxenlowe

  3. Center for Silicon Photonics for Optical Communication (SPOC), Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark

    Yunhong Ding, Davide Bacco, Karsten Rottwitt & Leif K. Oxenlowe

  4. State Key Laboratory for Mesoscopic Physics, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Yan-Jun Qian, Yan Li, Yun-Feng Xiao, Qihuang Gong & Jianwei Wang

  5. Frontiers Science Center for Nano-optoelectronics & Collaborative Innovation Center of Quantum Matter, Peking University, Bejing, China

    Yan Li, Yun-Feng Xiao, Qihuang Gong & Jianwei Wang

  6. Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences, Beijing, China

    Yun-Feng Xiao, Qihuang Gong & Jianwei Wang

  7. Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI), Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria

    Marcus Huber

  8. Institute of Photonics and Quantum Sciences (IPaQS), Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK

    Mehul Malik

  9. State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies and School of Physics, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China

    Xiaoqi Zhou

  10. Department of Physics, The University of Western Australia, Perth, Western Australia, Australia

    Jeremy L. O’Brien

Authors
  1. Daniel Llewellyn
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Yunhong Ding
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Imad I. Faruque
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Stefano Paesani
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Davide Bacco
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Raffaele Santagati
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Yan-Jun Qian
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  8. Yan Li
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  9. Yun-Feng Xiao
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  10. Marcus Huber
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  11. Mehul Malik
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  12. Gary F. Sinclair
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  13. Xiaoqi Zhou
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  14. Karsten Rottwitt
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  15. Jeremy L. O’Brien
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  16. John G. Rarity
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  17. Qihuang Gong
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  18. Leif K. Oxenlowe
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  19. Jianwei Wang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  20. Mark G. Thompson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

All authors contributed to the discussion and development of the project. J.W. devised the concept of the experiment. Y.D. designed and fabricated the device. D.L., Y.D., I.I.F., J.W., S.P., D.B. and R.S. performed the experiment. J.W., D.L., Y.D., I.I.F., Y.-J.Q., Y.L., Y.-F.X., M.H., M.M., G.F.S. and X.Z. performed the theoretical analysis. K.R., J.L.O., J.G.R., Q.G., L.K.O., Y.D., J.W. and M.G.T. managed the project. The manuscript was written by J.W., D.L., Y.D. and I.I.F., with input from all other authors.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jianwei Wang.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

M.T. is involved in developing quantum photonic technologies at PsiQuantum Corporation.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–12 and discussion.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 2

Source data for Fig. 2

Source Data Fig. 3

Source data for Fig. 3

Source Data Fig. 4

Source data for Fig. 4

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Llewellyn, D., Ding, Y., Faruque, I.I. et al. Chip-to-chip quantum teleportation and multi-photon entanglement in silicon. Nat. Phys. 16, 148–153 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-019-0727-x

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-019-0727-x

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing