Scalable Hybrid Device Architecture on Thin-Film Lithium Tantalate for Long Distance Quantum Network Nodes with Atomic Frequency Comb Quantum Memories

Scalable photonic circuits are essential for realizing practical quantum networks beyond proof-of-principle demonstrations. Although diamond-based integrated photonics has been extensively investigated over the past two decades for quantum networking applications, its integration into scalable photonic platforms remains challenging. Quantum memories based on rare-earth-ion atomic frequency combs (AFCs) offer an attractive alternative; however, most demonstrations to date have relied on bulk free-space crystals, limiting their scalability for practical implementations. In this work, we systematically investigate the potential for hybrid integration of AFC-based quantum memories with a scalable integrated photonic platform. We propose a device architecture combining thin-film lithium tantalate (TFLT) nanophotonic circuits with ytterbium-doped yttrium orthosilicate (Yb:YSO) crystals for long-distance quantum communication. Our analysis shows that the hybrid TFLT-YSO platform offers a promising and scalable pathway toward integrated quantum memories and, ultimately, large-scale quantum networks.

Source: arXiv:2609.31598v1 - http://arxiv.org/abs/2609.31598v1 PDF: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2609.31598v1 Original Link: http://arxiv.org/abs/2609.31598v1