Engineering two-photon wavefunction and exchange statistics in a semiconductor chip

High-dimensional entangled states of light provide novel possibilities for quantum information, from fundamental tests of quantum mechanics to enhanced computation and communication protocols. In this context, the frequency degree of freedom combines the assets of robustness to propagation and easy handling with standard telecommunication components. Here, we use an integrated semiconductor chip to engineer the wavefunction and exchange statistics of frequency-entangled photon pairs directly at the generation stage, without post-manipulation. Tailoring the spatial properties of the pump beam allows generating frequency-anticorrelated, correlated and separable states, and to control the symmetry of the spectral wavefunction to induce either bosonic or fermionic behaviors. These results, obtained at room temperature and telecom wavelength, open promising perspectives for the quantum simulation of fermionic problems with photons on an integrated platform, as well as for communication and computation protocols exploiting antisymmetric high-dimensional quantum states.