Professor Jiang Chun and his team have experimentally demonstrated, for the first time, the robust on-chip transport characteristics of a quantum frequency comb in a topological valley photonic crystal waveguide. Optical frequency combs in integrated photonics have wide-ranging applications in disruptive technologies such as high-dimensional optical computing, large-capacity communications, and high-speed interconnects. However, quantum frequency combs possessing high-dimensional quantum states are susceptible to decoherence effects, particularly in the presence of perturbations like sharp bends. By measuring the temporal correlation properties and joint spectral intensity of the quantum frequency comb, Professor Jiang Chun's team discovered that, due to the characteristics of the topological quantum valley Hall effect, quantum correlations and frequency-entangled states remain stable even under sharp bending conditions. Furthermore, experiments confirmed that a dissipative Kerr soliton frequency comb with a bandwidth of 20 THz can maintain its spectral envelope and low-noise characteristics under structural perturbations. This type of optical frequency comb with topological protection provides a light source solution for the field of high-dimensional photonic information processing that combines robustness, complex controllability, high controllability, and scalability, and will strongly promote technological advancement in this field.

The article on the above research, titled "On-chip topological transport of integrated optical frequency combs," was published in the January 2025 issue of Photonics Research (classified as a Chinese Academy of Sciences Zone 1 journal, a top-tier journal in the field of photonics).