On Chip Quantum States Generation by Incoherent Light

Abstract

On-chip quantum sources based on nonlinear processes are pivotal components in integrated photonics, driving significant advancements in quantum information technologies over recent decades. Usually, the pump coherence has been considered to be crucial for ensuring the quality of generated states, therefore incoherent light is rarely used in quantum information processing. In this work, we explore and reveal the constructive influence of pumped temporal incoherence on the quantum properties of photon sources. Taking silicon waveguides as nonlinear media, we theoretically show that temporal incoherence of light can improve pumping utilization efficiency, resulting in higher source brightness in a spontaneous four-wave mixing process, and the spectrally uncorrelated nature of incoherent light is transferred to the generated photon source, allowing high-purity state preparation. Experimentally, we obtain a higher photon pair generation rate and the lower heralded second-order autocorrelation with an Amplified Spontaneous Emission source. Additionally, we successfully generate a polarization-entangled state with Bell inequality violation of S = 2.64 and a fidelity of 95.7%. Our study reveals the mechanism behind incoherently pumped quantum states and presents a method for generating photon sources using an easily accessible incoherent light.