Monolithic on-chip integration of semiconductor waveguides, beamsplitters and single-photon sources

Abstract: The implementation of a fully integrated Hadamard gate on one single chip is currently one of the major goals in the quantum computation and communication community. Prerequisites for such a chip are the integration of single-photon sources and detectors into waveguide structures such as photonic crystals or slab and ridge waveguide. Here, we present an implementation of a single-photon on-chip experiment based on a III-V semiconductor platform. Individual semiconductor quantum dots were used as pulsed single-photon sources integrated in ridge waveguides, and on-chip waveguide-beamsplitter operation is verified on the single-photon level by performing off-chip photon cross-correlation measurements between the two output ports of the beamsplitter. A careful characterization of the waveguide propagation losses (~ 0.0068 dB/um) documents the applicability of such GaAs-based waveguide structures in more complex photonic integrated circuits. The presented work marks an important step towards the realization of fully integrated photonic quantum circuits including on-demand single-photon sources.