In photonic quantum applications, optical routers are required to handle single photons with low loss, high speed, and preservation of their quantum states. Single-photon routing with maintained polarization states is particularly important for utilizing them as qubits. Here, we demonstrate a polarization-maintaining electro-optic router compatible with single photons. Our custom electro-optic modulator is embedded in a configuration of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer, where each optical component achieves polarization-maintaining operation. We observe the performance of the router with 2-4% loss, 20 dB switching extinction ratio, 2.9 ns rise time, and > 99% polarization process fidelity to an ideal identity operation.
@article{arxiv.2401.06369,
title = {Low-Loss Polarization-Maintaining Optical Router for Photonic Quantum Information Processing},
author = {Pengfei Wang and Soyoung Baek and Keiichi Edamatsu and Fumihiro Kaneda},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2401.06369},
year = {2024}
}