Polarization Independent Quantum Devices With Ultra-Low Birefringence Glass Waveguides

In recent years, femtosecond laser direct writing technology has made great progress in integrated quantum photonic circuits due to its advantages of applicability to an extensive range of materials and true 3-D ability. However, a waveguide prepared via a femtosecond laser shows a non-circular cross section and high birefringence, which seriously restricts the development of polarization encoded quantum photonic integrated chips towards greater integration and higher functions. Here, we propose an amplitude-phase double shaping method to reduce waveguide birefringence, which involves using a cylindrical lens and slits. A waveguide prepared using this method shows a circularity cross-section that reaches up to 97.6% and a birefringence that is as low as 1.49 × 10
⁻⁶
. Based on such an ultralow birefringence waveguide, a polarization independent Hong-Ou-Mandel quantum interferometer was fabricated. Interference visibilities for identical photon pairs in different polarization states were found to be more than 95% with a standard deviation of 0.6%. The ultra-low birefringence single-mode waveguide and the polarization-independent interferometer realized using this approach will play an important role in large-scale polarization encoding integrated quantum photonic chips.