On-chip chiral single-photon interface: Isolation and unidirectional emission

Abstract

Chiral quantum systems have received intensive attention in fundamental physics and applications in quantum information processing including optical isolation and photon unidirectional emission. Here, we design an on-chip emitter-resonator system with strong chiral light-matter interaction for a chiral single-photon interface. The system includes a microring resonator with a strong evanescent field and a near-unity optical chirality along both of the whole outside and inside walls, allowing a strong and chiral coupling of the whispering-gallery mode to a quantum emitter. By initializing a quantum dot in a specific spin ground state or shifting the transition energy with a polarization-selective optical Stark effect, we show a broadband optical isolation at the single-photon level over several gigahertz. Furthermore, a quantum emitter chirally coupling to the microring resonator can emit single photons unidirectionally. Our protocol paves the way to realize a multifunctional chiral single-photon interface for on-chip quantum information processing and quantum networks.