Session: Research Posters

Paper Number: 172834

Engineering Scalable Quantum Technologies Using Nanophotonic Synthetic Dimensions 

Quantum systems promise transformative capabilities in computing and sensing by exploiting quantum phenomena such as superposition and entanglement. Yet, today’s digital quantum platforms face major challenges due to noise and fragility. Analog quantum simulation—where engineered physical systems emulate complex materials—offers a promising intermediate path. Towards this goal, the Dutt lab's work focuses on building scalable photonic platforms that realize synthetic dimensions, a rapidly developing concept that encodes lattice degrees of freedom into internal modes of light such as frequency or temporal structure. These synthetic lattices enable the realization of high-dimensional Hamiltonians with long-range coupling and artificial magnetic and electric fields on lower dimensional geometries. They also possess dynamic reconfigurability of the connectivity between lattice sites, which is unprecedented in real physical space. Leveraging low-loss nanophotonics in thin-film materials such as silicon nitride, we engineer chip-scale synthetic dimensions that are quantum compatible. We use driven microring resonators with quality factors in excess of 2 million to access spectral mode lattices, extending their use into the quantum regime especially when combined with nonlinear optics. The subwavelength-scale spatial confinement along with the high quality factor enhanced light-matter interaction and nonlinear effects, while rigorous design allows for low loss propagation as well as efficient coupling between fiber and chip.

Using such nonlinear optical interactions, we experimentally prepare special quantum states of light called squeezed and entangled states along this frequency synthetic dimension. These states have demonstrated quantum advantage in sensing in macroscopic off-chip platforms, and our work aims to bring this to the chip scale form factor without compromising the degree of quantum correlations -- squeezing -- while simultaneously increasing their bandwidth. Our recent results show the highest levels of squeezing achieved in an integrated on-chip platform, of 5.6 dB. We combine this in tandem with active and passive stabilization techniques using PID and other control theory techniques to enable broadband wavelength coverage across the technologically relevant 1550-nm band. The high-dimensional and broadband nature of the synthetic dimension platform brings about new challenges on the detection side, necessitating novel homodyne and heterodyne coherent detection techniques that are also being developed in our research. The experimental effort is supplemented by rigorous theory and simulations to efficiently and accurately compute the input-output relations of these high-dimensional quantum systems. Overall, this work will build compact, low power and massively manufacturable nanophotonic devices for analog quantum simulation and sensing using the existing infrastructure of silicon CMOS foundries, providing a transformational impact in these disciplines and beyond.

Presenting Author: Avik Avik University of Maryland College Park

Presenting Author Biography: Bio: Avik Dutt (MS/PhD ECE, Cornell University ‘17, B.Tech IIT Kharagpur ‘11), is an Assistant Professor and a National Quantum Lab (QLab) Fellow at the University of Maryland, College Park, with joint appointments in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the multidisciplinary Institute for Physical Science and Technology (IPST). His doctoral dissertation about on-chip quantum and nonlinear optics was partially supported by a Jacobs Fellowship and received the Zurich Instruments thesis award in 2017. Subsequently he acquired postdoctoral training on quantum Hall effects and topology at Stanford. Dutt has a broad background in quantum and nonlinear nanophotonics and topological photonics. He has also proposed theoretical schemes for analog and digital quantum simulation. He is a recipient of an NSF CAREER award (2024), the inaugural SURA Early Career Scientist Award (2024), a 2020 Rising Star of Light award, and a 2020 Outstanding Reviewer recognition by the journal Light: Science & Applications. Avik has more than 100 journal articles and peer-reviewed conference publications, and has presented more than 40 invited talks. Several of his primary authored papers have been published in reputed journals including Science, Nature Physics, Science Advances and Nature Communications.

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