Quantum vortices of light carrying orbital angular momentum stand as essential resources for quantum photonic technologies. Recent advancements in integrated photonics offer the potential to create and control quantum vortices using fully integrated circuits, eliminating the need for intricate free-space alignment, modulation and the stabilization of bulky optical elements. However, generating quantum vortices in planar optical waveguides and circuits poses challenges, owing to the complexities of confining and guiding twisted photons and, importantly, the difficulties in preparing the quantum superposition and entanglement of vortex states. Here we report the realization of entangled quantum vortex emitters, leveraging programmable integrated nanophotonic circuits. These circuits enable the generation and arbitrary control of resilient vortex entanglement in free space, coherently transitioning from on-chip-created path entanglement. This capability is facilitated by a chip-to-free-space interfacing quantum technology that combines reprogrammable integrated quantum photonics with advanced classical free-space beam structuring. The emitters operate in a plug-and-play manner, enabling swift reconfiguration within microseconds. Validation of multidimensional genuine entanglement is achieved through quantum tomography and measurement of the dimension witness. Our work demonstrates integrated quantum vortex devices that combine the versatility of the on-chip processing quantum information with the robustness of transmitting quantum vortices in free space, opening new avenues for applications in quantum communication, quantum light detection and ranging, and quantum computation and storage.

We demonstrate the capability of graph theory scheme to realize complex multiphoton multidimensional state. We show the generation of quantum states based on graph theory was realized by the reconfigurable integrated quantum chip. The 4-photon 3-dimensional GHZ state was generated and verified and manipulated for the first time.

Quantum networks provide the framework for quantum communication, clock synchronization, distributed quantum computing, and sensing. Implementing large-scale and practical quantum networks relies on the development of scalable architecture and integrated hardware that can coherently interconnect many remote quantum nodes by sharing multidimensional entanglement through complex-medium quantum channels. We demonstrate a multichip multidimensional quantum entanglement network based on mass-manufacturable integrated-nanophotonic quantum node chips fabricated on a silicon wafer by means of complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor processes. Using hybrid multiplexing, we show that multiple multidimensional entangled states can be distributed across multiple chips connected by few-mode fibers. We developed a technique that can efficiently retrieve multidimensional entanglement in complex-medium quantum channels, which is important for practical uses. Our work demonstrates the enabling capabilities of realizing large-scale practical chip-based quantum entanglement networks.

Graphs have provided an expressive mathematical tool to model quantum-mechanical devices and systems. In particular, it has been recently discovered that graph theory can be used to describe and design quantum components, devices, setups and systems, based on the two-dimensional lattice of parametric nonlinear optical crystals and linear optical circuits, different to the standard quantum photonic framework. Realizing such graph-theoretical quantum photonic hardware, however, remains extremely challenging experimentally using conventional technologies. Here we demonstrate a graph-theoretical programmable quantum photonic device in very-large-scale integrated nanophotonic circuits. The device monolithically integrates about 2,500 components, constructing a synthetic lattice of nonlinear photon-pair waveguide sources and linear optical waveguide circuits, and it is fabricated on an eight-inch silicon-on-insulator wafer by complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor processes. We reconfigure the quantum device to realize and process complex-weighted graphs with different topologies and to implement different tasks associated with the perfect matching property of graphs. As two non-trivial examples, we show the generation of genuine multipartite multidimensional quantum entanglement with different entanglement structures, and the measurement of probability distributions proportional to the modulus-squared hafnian (permanent) of the graph’s adjacency matrices. This work realizes a prototype of graph-theoretical quantum photonic devices manufactured by very-large-scale integration technologies, featuring arbitrary programmability, high architectural modularity and massive manufacturing scalability.

Programmability is crucial in noisy intermediate-scale quantum computing, facilitating various functionalities for practical applications. An arbitrary programmable time-bin-encoded quantum boson sampling device has been developed, specifically tailored for potential drug discovery.

Controlling and programming quantum devices to process quantum information by the unit of quantum dit, i.e., qudit, provides the possibilities for noise-resilient quantum communications, delicate quantum molecular simulations, and efficient quantum computations, showing great potential to enhance the capabilities of qubit-based quantum technologies. Here, we report a programmable qudit-based quantum processor in silicon-photonic integrated circuits and demonstrate its enhancement of quantum computational parallelism. The processor monolithically integrates all the key functionalities and capabilities of initialisation, manipulation, and measurement of the two quantum quart (ququart) states and multi-value quantum-controlled logic gates with high-level fidelities. By reprogramming the configuration of the processor, we implemented the most basic quantum Fourier transform algorithms, all in quaternary, to benchmark the enhancement of quantum parallelism using qudits, which include generalised Deutsch-Jozsa and Bernstein-Vazirani algorithms, quaternary phase estimation and fast factorization algorithms. The monolithic integration and high programmability have allowed the implementations of more than one million high-fidelity preparations, operations and projections of qudit states in the processor. Our work shows an integrated photonic quantum technology for qudit-based quantum computing with enhanced capacity, accuracy, and efficiency, which could lead to the acceleration of building a large-scale quantum computer.

The quantum Toffoli gate is one of the most important three-qubit gates, but it is challenging to construct a chip according to the complicated traditional circuit. Using the optimized 3D configuration with an overpass waveguide to reduce the circuit complexity, we successfully fabricate an on-chip path encoded photonic quantum Toffoli gate enabled by the 3D capability of the femtosecond laser direct writing (FLDW) for the first time to our knowledge, whose truth-table fidelity is higher than 85.5%. Furthermore, a path encoded four-qubit controlled-controlled-controlled NOT gate is written to confirm the scalability of this resource-saving technique. This work paves the way for the FLDW of more complex and powerful photonic quantum computation chips.

We report the multi-path delayed-choice experiment on a large-scale integrated silicon photonic chip. Wave- and particle-nature in generalised form are characterised experimentally and the generalisation of Bohr’s multi-path duality relation is demonstrated.

Characterization and categorization of quantum correlations are both fundamentally and practically important in quantum information science. Although quantum correlations such as non-separability, steerability, and non-locality can be characterized by different theoretical models in different scenarios with either known (trusted) or unknown (untrusted) knowledge of the associated systems, such characterization sometimes lacks unambiguous to experimentalist. In this work, we propose the physical interpretation of nonlocal quantum correlation between two systems. In the absence of complete local description of one of the subsystems quantified by the local uncertainty relation, the correlation between subsystems becomes nonlocal. Remarkably, different nonlocal quantum correlations can be discriminated from a single uncertainty relation derived under local hidden state (LHS)-LHS model only. We experimentally characterize the two-qubit Werner state in different scenarios.

Quantum technology is poised to enable a step change in human capability for computing, communications and sensing. Photons are indispensable as carriers of quantum information-they travel at the fastest possible speed and readily protected from decoherence. However, the system requires thousands of near-transparent components with ultra-low-latency control. To be implemented, a new paradigm photonic system is required: one with in-built coherence, stability, the ability to define arbitrary circuits, and a path to manufacturability. Silicon photonics has unparalleled density and component performance, which, with CMOS compatible fabrication, place it in a strong position for a scalable quantum photonics platform. This paper is a progress report on silicon quantum photonics, focused on developments in the past five years. We provide an introduction on silicon quantum photonic component and the challenges in the field, summarise the current state-of-the-art and identify outstanding technical challenges, as well as promising avenues of future research. We also resolve a conflict in the definition of Hong-Ou-Mandel interference visibility in integrated quantum photonic experiments, needed for fair comparison of photon quality across different platforms. Our aim is the development of scalability on the platform, to which end we point the way to ever-closer integration, toward silicon quantum photonic systems-on-a-chip.

We report topologically-protected entanglement emitters, that emit topological Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen state and multiphoton entangled state from a plug-and-play silicon-photonic chip in ambient conditions. The device emulating a photonic anomalous Floquet insulator allows the generation of four-photon topological entangled states at nontrivial edge modes.

The wave-particle duality of quantum objects has been a center concept in quantum mechanics since its birth. For the two-path or two-slit experiment, the dual nature of quantum matter has been well studied in various systems. To rule out the interpretation of quanta knowing the measurement setting it will be confronted, Wheeler proposed the famous delayed-choice gedanken experiment [1] , which is an ideal platform to test the intrinsic characters of wave-particle duality. However, all these experiments to date have been focused on the two-path case.

Bohr’s complementarity is one central tenet of quantum physics. The paradoxical wave-particle duality of quantum matters and photons has been tested in Young’s double-slit (double-path) interferometers. The object exclusively exhibits wave and particle nature, depending measurement apparatus that can be delayed chosen to rule out too-naive interpretations of quantum complementarity. All experiments to date have been implemented in the double-path framework, while it is of fundamental interest to study complementarity in multipath interferometric systems. Here, we demonstrate generalized multipath wave-particle duality in a quantum delayed-choice experiment, implemented by large-scale silicon-integrated multipath interferometers. Single-photon displays sophisticated transitions between wave and particle characters, determined by the choice of quantum-controlled generalized Hadamard operations. We characterise particle-nature by multimode which-path information and wave-nature by multipath coherence of interference, and demonstrate the generalisation of Bohr’s multipath duality relation. Our work provides deep insights into multidimensional quantum physics and benchmarks controllability of integrated photonic quantum technology.

Silicon quantum photonics is a promising platform for the development of advanced quantum information technologies, offering a high level of stability, controllability, scalability and integration density. Silicon quantum photonics has enabled a range of key demonstrations including the development of a versatile toolbox for controlling single-photon's different degrees of freedom, the generation of multipartite entanglement and high-dimensional entanglement, and realization of large-scale programmable quantum devices. The progress has unlocked the unprecedented power of chipscale quantum photonic technologies for advanced applications in quantum communication, computing and simulation.