CEA-Leti today announced plans to build a quantum-photonics system for hack-proof communications.

Quantum technology is expected to provide unconditionally safe data encryption required by the finance, health care, energy, telecommunications, defense and other essential industries and sectors.

 Funded by the R&D network Carnot, the project will build on CEA-Leti’s silicon-photonics platform complemented with new quantum characterization equipment for designing, processing and testing quantum-photonic integrated components and circuits.

 The three-year project will fabricate silicon-photonics circuits that generate single photons, manipulate those photons with linear optical components such as slow and rapid phase shifters and detect them with superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPD).

The project will build demonstrators for transmitting and receiving information in a quantum-based system to deliver quantum-technology’s promise for ultra-secure cryptography.

For example, the demonstrators will realize an integrated qubit transmitter, as a circuit generating single photons and entangling them. An integrated qubit receiver will be built to detect the photons.

 Beyond these demonstrators, the CEA-Leti team will focus on integrating the qubit transmitter and the qubit receiver on one unique platform to address also quantum computing applications.

 Noting that a quantum system based on single-photon qubits must ensure there is minimal propagation loss of photons to be reliable, project leader Ségolène Olivier said CEA-Leti’s silicon photonics platform has achieved a world-record of low-loss silicon and ultralow-loss silicon-nitride waveguides.

“Propagation losses in waveguides directly impact the data rate and reach of quantum communications links, that’s why it is so important to build ultralow-loss components and circuits,”  said Olivier. 

 CEA-Leti has already demonstrated a generation of entangled photon pairs on its silicon-photonics platform, and has other techniques in-house to address the single-photon detection challenges: CdHgTe avalanche photodiodes (APD) with a world-record speed in photon counting and materials deposition for integrated superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors.