Modeling the Quantum Photon Statistics in Hybrid Light-Matter Integrated Circuits

Abstract

Strong light-matter coupling between a guided electromagnetic mode and an excitonic semiconductor transition gives rise to exciton-polaritons with optical nonlinearities far exceeding those of conventional photonic platforms. Utilizing these nonlinearities in the few-particle regime, where quantum signatures such as photon antibunching, sub-Poissonian statistics and non-trivial inter-mode correlations become accessible, is a central goal of integrated quantum photonics. Yet, a quantitative theoretical framework connecting realistic waveguide parameters to measurable non-classical photonic output is absent. Here, we present a comprehensive framework for predicting and benchmarking quantum photon statistics in polaritonic integrated circuits, using state-of-the-art experimentally achieved device parameters for (Al)GaAs waveguide platforms. By mapping the pulsed nonlinear waveguide dynamics onto a bosonic quantum circuit representation that explicitly incorporates dissipation, we identify experimentally accessible quantum signatures across two circuit configurations: a single waveguide in a free-space interferometric configuration and a fully integrated multimode coupled-waveguide circuit. We further show that slow-light engineering of the polariton dispersion offers a practical route to amplifying the effective nonlinearity, pushing quantum signatures beyond Gaussian statistics.