Recent advances in optical switching have yielded an all-fiber, all-optical, device capable of routing single-photon quantum signals at high rates (≈25 GHz), with almost immeasurably small degradation of the quantum state[1, 2, 3]. These switches can facilitate complex quantum networking and quantum information processing schemes. However, the complexity of these applications is inherently limited by the insertion loss of the switching devices. The lowest demonstrated insertion loss for a two-input, two-output, all-optical quantum switch is ≈3 dB. In this thesis, I describe my work demonstrating all-optical quantum switching with insertion loss reduced as low as 0.16 dB. I also present several applications of quantum switching, including novel techniques for quantum computation and photon-starved classical communications, and present two experimental case studies showing that this improved switching can be used to implement complex information processing tasks. I show that the low-loss of this quantum switching technology can be used to multiplex the outputs of single-photon sources to improve the production rate, and that the technology can also be used to implement a novel receiver for deep-space optical communication.

Last modified

• 02/20/2018

Creator

• Timothy Michael Rambo

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/N2F38M

Subject

• Electrical Engineering

Keyword

• Photonics
• Switch
• Quantum
• nonlinear optics

Date created

• 2016-01-01

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright