An integrated photonics platform for high-speed, ultrahigh-extinction, many-channel quantum control
Abstract
High-fidelity control of the thousands to millions of programmable qubits needed for utility-scale quantum computers presents a formidable challenge for control systems. In leading atomic systems, control is optical: UV-NIR beams must be fanned out over numerous spatial channels and modulated to implement gates. While photonic integrated circuits (PICs) offer a potentially scalable solution, they also need to simultaneously feature high-speed and high-extinction modulation, strong inter-channel isolation, and broad wavelength compatibility. Here, we introduce and experimentally validate a foundry-fabricated PIC platform that overcomes these limitations. Designed for Rubidium-87 neutral atom quantum computers, our 8-channel PICs, fabricated on a 200-mm wafer process, demonstrate an advanced combination of performance metrics. At the 795 nm single-qubit gate wavelength, we achieve a mean extinction ratio (ER) of 71.4 1.1 dB, nearest-neighbor on-chip crosstalk of -68.0 1.0 dB, and -50.8 0.2 dB after parallel beam delivery in free-space. This high-performance operation extends to the 420 nm and 1013 nm wavelengths for two-qubit Rydberg gates, showing ERs of 42.4 dB (detector-limited) and 61.5 dB, respectively. The devices exhibit 10-90% rise times of 26 7 ns, achieve dynamic switching to -60 dB levels within microsecond timescales, and show pulse stability errors at the level. This work establishes a scalable platform for developing advanced large-scale optical control required in fault-tolerant quantum computers and other precision technologies.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2508.09920,
title = {An integrated photonics platform for high-speed, ultrahigh-extinction, many-channel quantum control},
author = {Mengdi Zhao and Manuj Singh and Anshuman Singh and Henry Thoreen and Robert J. DeAngelo and Daniel Dominguez and Andrew Leenheer and Frédéric Peyskens and Alexander Lukin and Dirk Englund and Matt Eichenfield and Nathan Gemelke and Noel H. Wan},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.09920},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
8 pages, 5 figures