Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

Quantum information processing and communication promise to unlock the ability to solve previously intractable problems and provide unconditionally secure information sharing. Creating a hardware platform that allows these capabilities to be combined, e.g. allows for quantum information processing devices to be networked and communicate using light, is a major goal for many leading academic and industrial research teams. It is also a challenge that Canada is poised to play a large role in solving, thanks to its strong photonics industry and nascent commercial quantum computing ecosystem. This project tackles this problem by creating quantum information processing devices that combine electronic, optical, and mechanical quantum systems and exploits their most desirable properties: light for off-chip networking, electronic spins for information storage, and mechanical phonons for connecting spins on-chip. This project builds on recent breakthroughs by the applicants in creating "spin-optomechanical" devices. These devices are at the forefront of nanophotonics research, a field that develops nanofabrication and computational modeling techniques to build systems that enhance the coupling between light and other quantum systems. To realize this timely research, this project brings together leaders in highly integrated nanophotonic circuit research, leaders in quantum nanophotonics and networking research, and an industrial partner with unsurpassed expertise in nanophotonics. This partnership will allow strategically important multiphysics functionality to be added to the industry partner's world leading photonic simulation tools, and will provide a platform to demonstrate the power of these tools through highly novel experiments. This project builds on major recent investment in state-of-the-art infrastructure (two multimillion CFI awards), and will position Canada as a leader within a highly competitive and rapidly growing area of quantum technology development.