Scalable Liquid-Crystal Integrated Silicon Nitride Photonic Circuits for Reconfigurable Quantum Interference
Abstract
Integrated quantum photonics requires compact, efficient, and low-power phase modulators. While silicon nitride (SiN) is a promising platform, existing modulators suffer from high power consumption, thermal crosstalk, or high driving voltages. Liquid crystal (LC) offers a compelling alternative because of the large index changes and industrial maturity. However, their suitability for supporting various applications in the photonic quantum system has not been experimentally confirmed.Here, we report the first experimental demonstration that LC-based phase modulators integrated on a SiN platform show highly visible quantum interference. We fabricated a liquid-crystal integrated Mach-Zehnder interferometer (LC-MZI) that achieved CMOS-compatible performance with V_pi * L < 1 V-mm. In two-photon interference experiments, the devices exhibited high-visibility quantum interference (~98.5%) with voltage-tunable phase control. Furthermore, we validated the scalability of our approach by demonstrating wafer-scale fabrication using stepper lithography. This work establishes LC-integrated SiN photonics as a scalable, reconfigurable, and energy-efficient platform for quantum photonic circuits.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2605.07281,
title = {Scalable Liquid-Crystal Integrated Silicon Nitride Photonic Circuits for Reconfigurable Quantum Interference},
author = {Chunghyun Ahn and Yongjin Hwang and Sangbaek Lee and Jinil Lee and Hyunjin Ko and Sunghyun Moon and Hojoong Jung and Hyun-Yong Yu and Se-Um Kim and Hyounghan Kwon},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.07281},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
22 pages, 5 figures. Final version for submission