On-chip steering of entangled photons in nonlinear photonic crystals

One promising technique for working toward practical photonic quantum technologies is to implement multiple operations on a monolithic chip, thereby improving stability, scalability and miniaturization. The on-chip spatial control of entangled photons will certainly benefit numerous applications, including quantum imaging, quantum lithography, quantum metrology and quantum computation. However, external optical elements are usually required to spatially control the entangled photons. Here we present the first experimental demonstration of on-chip spatial control of entangled photons, based on a domain-engineered nonlinear photonic crystal. We manipulate the entangled photons using the inherent properties of the crystal during the parametric downconversion, demonstrating two-photon focusing and beam-splitting from a periodically poled lithium tantalate crystal with a parabolic phase profile. These experimental results indicate that versatile and precise spatial control of entangled photons is achievable. Because they may be operated independent of any bulk optical elements, domain-engineered nonlinear photonic crystals may prove to be a valuable ingredient in on-chip integrated quantum optics.