Consortium on Integrated Quantum Photonics with Ferroelectric Materials

Research

Our Mission

Our goal is to transform quantum photonics from an optical table to a silicon chip by incorporating ferroelectric materials such as barium titanite (BaTiO3 or BTO) and lithium niobate (LiNbO3 or LNO) into silicon photonic chips. We bring together researchers from across industry and universities with expertise in materials’ growth using molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), photonic chip design and fabrication, theoretical modeling, and quantum optics experimentation. Our research will develop the devices required to make photonic quantum computing commercially viable in both discrete and continuous-variable approaches.

Quantum information science and technologies that use photons as qubits have enormous unrealized potential, as suggested by the most convincing realization, so far, of a quantum algorithm operating much faster than its classical counterpart. Photons offer unique advantages as information carriers; for example, they travel at the speed of light, enabling ultrafast operations in contrast to other Quantum Computing (QC) architectures. They act as “flying qubits” that can transmit quantum information over long distances, enabling a series of algorithms for distributed QC, the so-called quantum internet. They can also be easily integrated with existing semiconductor fabrication processes, offering the potential for low-cost mass production.