Abstract: In recent years, photonic integrated circuits (PICs) have become an essential technology to enable the deployment of QKD at large scales. The rapidly evolving capabilities offered by the different PIC platforms and technologies make them more and more suitable for quantum applications. This tutorial will introduce the basics of photonic integration and highlight central distinctions between optoelectronically active and passive materials. Through a review of recent results, I will show how, by exploiting key features of semiconductors and laser physics, conventional photonic integration can be used to implement high-performance quantum communication functions, components and systems. While fully monolithic approaches can present limitations inherent to the material characteristics, combining different materials using hybrid photonic integration is a promising route to further improve the performance and flexibility of the photonic circuits. I will conclude with perspectives and outlook on future quantum PIC technologies.
Bio: Dr. Taofiq Paraiso is a Team Leader at Toshiba Europe, Cambridge Research Lab, UK, where he is responsible for the development of photonic integrated circuits for quantum key distribution and quantum random number generation, as well as their system integration into practical chip-based QKD devices. Dr. Paraiso has over 15 years of academic and industrial research experience in the fields of quantum photonics, semiconductor physics, light-matter interactions and nanofabrication. He previously held research positions at the California Institute of Technology and the Max-Planck Institute for the Science of Light, Germany. He received his PhD in Physics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland.