Photonics for quantum

Ionic and atomic quantum compute and sensing systems use light to manipulate, control and read out the ions and neutral atoms that contain the quantum state. Today, extensive optical benches are used for the manipulation of the required photons. Scale-up towards systems of many thousands of atoms or ions will require scale-down of these optical control systems. To that end, it is required to develop dedicated photonic integrated circuits operating over a broad wavelength range, spanning from the UV to the near-infrared, because qubit state manipulation spans this whole spectrum. To keep the fidelity of the quantum compute operation, there are stringent requirements to the photonic devices. In the presentation, we will present the developments that we pursue at imec towards the creation of a photonic platform that will allow industry to create application-specific photonic integrated circuits for these quantum applications.