Grant: Alliance Grants

Semiconductor devices are the foundation of our modern technological society, whereas individual quanta of light (photons) are a foundational resource for quantum communication, sensing and computing. In this partnership project, cutting-edge semiconductor device engineering is utilized to develop novel, on-demand sources of single photons. These sources have unique capabilities, such as tunability between one- and two-photon emission, and can be scaled to on-chip arrays. With potential for high emission rate up to a billion photons per second, these sources address key challenges to the development of practical quantum technologies. As they are driven by single-electron devices and can be tied to a frequency standard, they have potential significance in metrology, i.e. defining the 'quantum candela'. In partnership with Canadian industry and government research labs, as well as international collaborators at world-leading metrology institutes, this project supports critical development stages of these quantum light sources, from proof-of-principle demonstration to practical application. It will enable the precise characterization of their physical properties, optimization of their efficiency for practical use, and application to real-world problems of interest to our partners, including quantum sensing and range-finding, photon radiometry and metrology, and coupling to fibre-based quantum networks.