New chip merges quantum light factories with on-chip control, enabling real-time stabilization of photon generation across 12 sources.
In a leap toward practical quantum systems, researchers from Boston University, UC Berkeley, and Northwestern University have built the world’s first integrated electronic–photonic– quantum chip . The study showcases a device that merges quantum light sources with stabilizing electronics on a single platform using a standard 45-nanometer semiconductor process.
The chip can produce streams of correlated photon pairs, particles of light crucial for future quantum computing, sensing, and secure communication. It marks the first time such a complex system has been built using commercial chip manufacturing techniques.“Quantum computing, communication, and sensing are on a decades-long path from concept to reality,” said Miloš Popović, associate professor at Boston University. “This is a small step on that path—but an important one, because it shows we can build repeatable, controllable quantum systems in commercial semiconductor foundries.”Each chip hosts twelve independent quantum light sources, each occupying less than a square millimeter. These “quantum light factories” are powered by laser light and rely on microring resonators to generate photon pairs. The resonators are extremely sensitive to changes in temperature and manufacturing variations, which often throw them out of sync and disrupt the light stream.To tackle this, the team embedded a real-time control system directly onto the chip.“What excites me most is that we embedded the control directly on-chip—stabilizing a quantum process in real time,” said Anirudh Ramesh, a PhD student at Northwestern who led the quantum measurements. “That’s a critical step toward scalable quantum systems.”Photodiodes were integrated inside each resonator to detect misalignment with incoming laser light, while on-chip heaters and control logic continuously corrected any drift. This feedback loop keeps the delicate quantum light generation process running smoothly even as conditions fluctuate.Standard chip tech, extraordinary functionTo make the system work within a strict commercial platform, the team had to rethink how quantum and classical electronics coexist on chip.“A key challenge relative to our previous work was to push photonics design to meet the demanding requirements of quantum optics while remaining within the strict constraints of a commercial CMOS platform,” said Imbert Wang, a PhD student at Boston University who led the photonic device design.The chip was built using a 45-nanometer CMOS platform originally co-developed by BU, UC Berkeley, GlobalFoundries, and Ayar Labs. That same platform, known for powering AI and supercomputing interconnects, now enables complex quantum photonics thanks to the new collaboration with Northwestern.“Our goal was to show that complex quantum photonic systems can be built and stabilized entirely within a CMOS chip,” said Daniel Kramnik, a PhD student at UC Berkeley who oversaw chip design and packaging. “That required tight coordination across domains that don’t usually talk to each other.”Several student researchers from the project have already moved to industry roles, continuing work in silicon photonics and quantum computing at startups like PsiQuantum and Ayar Labs, as well as Google X. The work was supported by the National Science Foundation, the Packard Fellowship, and GlobalFoundries.The study is published in the journal Nature Electronics.
Microring Resonator Photonic Chip Quantum Chip Quantum Computing Quantum Light Silicon Photonics
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