Professor de Sousa is the leader (Principal Investigator) of this collaborative grant funded by NSERC through the Alliance Consortia Quantum grants program.
The quanta of light, called photons, provide unique advantages for information processing and computing. Photons travel at the speed of light, enabling ultrafast operations in contrast to other quantum computing architectures. They can also carry quantum information over long distances as "flying qubits", needed for a future quantum internet. Despite these inherent advantages, photon-based quantum computers are much less developed than other quantum computing architectures such as atomic ion traps and superconducting circuits. The key obstacle is efficient generation of entanglement with low photon loss. Pioneering experiments circumvented this problem by using large crystals of ferroelectric materials with periodically-poled ferroelectric domains. Unfortunately, these experiments require an optical table which is not scalable to the large number of qubits required for a quantum computer with error correction. The goal of the Consortium on Integrated Quantum Photonics with Ferroelectric Materials is to translate quantum photonics from an optical table to a silicon chip by incorporating ferroelectric materials such as barium titanite (BaTiO3) and lithium niobate (LiNbO3) into silicon photonic chips. The proposal is strategic in that it brings together researchers from across industry and 6 Canadian universities with expertise in materials' growth using molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), photonic chip design and fabrication, theoretical modeling, and quantum optics experimentation. The end goal is to demonstrate two key primitives for photon-based quantum computing and quantum sensing: photon squeezing above the threshold for fault-tolerant quantum error correction, and photon cluster states. Our research will develop the devices required to make photonic quantum computing commercially viable in both discrete and continuous-variable approaches. It will help position Canada as a leader in chip-based quantum photonics and positively impact the industrial sectors key to everyday Canadian life by underpinning the technologies needed for secure communications, advanced sensors and quantum computing.
Check out this news article: More than the unit: entangled photons and an all-star collaboration.
For more information, go to our consortium page: ferroelectricphotonics.ca.
Funded by the Government of Canada’s New Frontiers in Research Fund - Exploration (Joint NFRF-E with Prof. Alexandre Brolo, UVic Chemistry).
The main objective of this research is to enhance the generation of entangled photons in photonic chips. The research requires a combination of expertise in the fields of materials' science, photonics, quantum computing, and quantum optics.
Conventional computational, communication, and sensing technologies are reaching their limit. Quantum approaches based on nonclassical states of light are being sought to replace the current state-of-the-art. Devices that exploit the quantum behaviour of light use a few photons to achieve communication with 100% secure cryptography, or many photons in a nonclassical squeezed state for quantum sensing beyond the best precision achievable by classical sources of light.
These states also enable the design of universal quantum computers that can solve problems that are intractable today. The key resource for quantum communication and computation with photons is the generation of entangled photon pairs, either in a few photon state or in a bright two-mode squeezed state. The standard method for the creation of entangled photon pairs requires high-powered laser systems and yet produces a very low yield of entangled photons. In this research, we are searching for novel mechanisms for the generation of entangled photons using low cost and low power light sources.
If realized, this research has the potential to greatly accelerate the development of quantum technology and to completely change communication and computation as we know it today.
For more information, check out our open access paper:
S. Timsina, T. Hammadia, S.G. Milani, F.S.D.A. Júnior, A. Brolo, and R. de Sousa, Resonant squeezed light from photonic Cooper pairs, Phys. Rev. Research 6, 033067 (2024).
Funded by NSERC Discovery.
Quantum computers use bits that behave quantum mechanically (qubits) to solve important problems faster and better than conventional computers. This includes factoring large integers, searching disordered databases, diagonalizing matrices, and simulating molecules and materials. Prototype "noisy" quantum computers based on superconducting technology have been developed by many companies, and are now accessible over the cloud. However, the level of noise in current quantum computers is 10-100 times higher than the error correction threshold, hindering demonstrations of quantum advantage over conventional computers. This research program aims to formulate new models of noise and decoherence in solid state quantum computers, and relate them to the output of cloud-based devices, in order to develop strategies for noise mitigation.
This will be done through the development of novel theories of noise in the solid state environment of quantum computers. We will relate flux and charge noise to the character of the materials and interfaces in the chips that realize quantum hardware, and use these findings to improve the output of quantum algorithms in cloud-based devices. The research program will improve both quantum hardware and software in order to achieve the fundamental noise limit in the solid state environment. Its long term impact will be to transcend the era of noisy intermediate-scale quantum computers (NISQ), providing a route to the demonstration of quantum advantage in useful applications.
For more information, please watch the Canadian Association of Physicist's lecture From Quantum Mechanics to Quantum Computers.