Reliable encoding of information in quantum systems is crucial to all approaches to quantum information processing or communication. This applies in particular to photons used in linear optics quantum computing, which is scalable provided a deterministic single-photon emission and preparation is available. Here, we show that narrowband photons deterministically emitted from an atom–cavity system fulfil these requirements. Within their 500 ns coherence time, we demonstrate a subdivision into d time bins of various amplitudes and phases, which we use for encoding arbitrary qu- d -its. The latter is done deterministically with a fidelity >95% for qubits, verified using a newly developed time-resolved quantum-homodyne method.
Reliable encoding of information in quantum systems is crucial to all approaches to quantum information processing or communication. This applies in particular to photons used in linear optics quantum computing, which is scalable provided a deterministic single-photon emission and preparation is available. Here, we show that narrowband photons deterministically emitted from an atom–cavity system fulfil these requirements. Within their 500 ns coherence time, we demonstrate a subdivision into d time bins of various amplitudes and phases, which we use for encoding arbitrary qu- d -its. The latter is done deterministically with a fidelity >95% for qubits, verified using a newly developed time-resolved quantum-homodyne method.
Abstract. Reliable encoding of information in quantum systems is crucial to all approaches to quantum information processing or communication. This applies in particular to photons used in linear optics quantum computing (LOQC), which is scalable provided a deterministic single-photon emission and preparation is available. Here, we show that narrowband photons deterministically emitted from an atom-cavity system fulfill these requirements. Within their 500 ns coherence time, we demonstrate a subdivision into d time bins of various amplitudes and phases, which we use for encoding arbitrary qu-d-its. The latter is done deterministically with a fidelity> 95% for qubits, verified using a newly developed time-resolved quantum-homodyne method.
Reliable encoding of information in quantum systems is crucial to all approaches to quantum information processing or communication. This applies in particular to photons used in linear optics quantum computing (LOQC), which is scalable provided a deterministic single-photon emission and preparation is available. Here, we show that narrowband photons deterministically emitted from an atom-cavity system fulfill these requirements. Within their 500 ns coherence time, we demonstrate a subdivision into d time bins of various amplitudes and phases, which we use for encoding arbitrary qu-d-its. The latter is done deterministically with a fidelity >95% for qubits, verified using a newly developed time-resolved quantum-homodyne method.
One of today’s challenge to realize computing based on quantum mechanics is to reliably and scalably encode information in quantum systems. Here, we present a photon source to on-demand deliver photonic quantum bits of information based on a strongly coupled atom-cavity system. It operates intermittently for periods of up to 100μs, with a single-photon repetition rate of 1MHz, and an intra-cavity production e!ciency of up to 85%. Due to the photons inherent coherence time of 500ns and our ability to arbitrarily shape their amplitude and phase profile we time-bin encode information within one photon. To do so, the spatio-temporal envelope of a single photon is sub-divided in d time bins which allows for the delivery of arbitrary qu-d-its. The latter is done with a fidelity of > 95% for qubits, and 94% for qutrits verified using a newly developed time-resolved quantum-homodyne technique.
Summary form only given. One of today's challenges to realize computing based on quantum mechanics is to reliably and scalably encode information in quantum systems. This is particularly crucial when dealing with promising approaches such as linear optics quantum computing (LOQC) in photonic circuits [1,2]. Although this method is in principle scalable, in practice it is limited by the probabilistic nature of spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) sources used to seed the circuits.Here, we demonstrate a novel tool to deterministically deliver quantum bits of information for LOQC circuits with the help of single photons emitted from a strongly coupled atom-cavity system (Fig. [1a]). Due to the ≈ 500ns coherence time of these photons [3] and our ability to arbitrarily shape their amplitude and phase profile we time-bin encode the information within one photon. Therefore, the preparation of a single photon sub-divided in d time bins allows for the delivery of arbitrary qu-d-its. RCPWe verify the fidelity of the quantum state preparation with time-resolved quantum-homodyne measurements [4], performed by sending single signal and reference photons into an elementary photonic circuit. Photon correlations monitored in a time-resolved manner then allow the state to be partially reconstructed. To obtain more insight into the time-bin encoding of information within one photon, it is helpful to define a `virtual' photonic circuit (Fig. [1b]) where temporal modes are displayed as spatial ones. Due to the photons being much longer than the detector time resolution, the absolute time of each photo-detection is used to associate the event with one of these virtual detectors. In this way, the respective number of cross-correlation signals for qubits and qutrits, respectively, can be found (Fig. [1c]). We obtain photon production efficiencies up to 85% and state-preparation fidelities of F=96% [4]. Due to the timebin encoding taking place upon the photon's generation process, our technique is inherently non-probabilistic, versatile, reconfigurable and not subject to systematic photon losses. Time-bins as an additional degree of freedom in LOQC experiments and an their deterministic photon-generation scheme can be regarded as a big step towards large-scale quantum computing in photonic networks.
One of today’s challenges to realise computing based on quantum mechanics is to reliably and scalably encode information in quantum systems. Here, we present a photon source to on-demand deliver photonic quantum bits of information based on a strongly coupled atom-cavity system. The source operates intermittently for periods of up to 100 μs, with a single-photon repetition rate of 1 MHz, and an intra-cavity production efficiency of up to 85%. Our ability to arbitrarily control the photons’ wavepackets and phase profiles, together with long coherence times of 500 ns, allows to store time-bin encoded quantum information within a single photon. To do so, the spatio-temporal envelope of a single photon is sub-divided in d time bins which allows for the delivery of arbitrary qu-d-its. This is done with a fidelity of > 95% for qubits, and 94% for qutrits verified using a newly developed time-resolved quantum-homodyne measurement technique. Additionally, we combine two separate fields of quantum physics by using our deterministic single-photon source to seed linear optics quantum computing (LOQC) circuits. As a step towards quantum networking, it is shown that this photon source can be combined with quantum gates, namely a chip-integrated beam splitter, a controlled-NOT (CNOT) gate as well as a CNOT4 gate. We use this CNOT4 gate to entangle photons deterministically emitted from our source and observe non-classical correlations between events separated by periods exceeding the travel time across the chip by three orders of magnitude. Additionally, we use time-bin encoded qubits to systematically study the de- and re-phasing of quantum states as well as the the effects of time-varying internal phases in photonic quantum circuits.
The possibility of creating a scaleable quantum network by interconverting photonic and atomic qubits shows great promise. The fundamental requirement for such a network is deterministic control over the emission and absorption of photons from single atoms. This thesis reports on the experi-mental construction of a photon source that can emit single-photons with arbitrary spatio-temporal shape, phase, and frequency. The photon source itself is a strongly-coupled atom cavity system based on a single 87 Rb atom within a macroscopic high-finesse Fabry-Perot cavity. It operates intermittently for periods of up to 100µs, with single-photon repetition rates of 1.0 MHz and an efficiency of almost 80%. Atoms are loaded into the cavity using an atomic fountain, with the upper turning point near the centre of the cavity mode. This ensures long interaction times without any disturbances introduced by trapping potentials. The photons’ indistinguishability was tested, with a two-photon Hong-Ou-Mandel visibility of 87%. This ability to both generate, and control, the photons’ properties, for example producing photons with symmetric or multi-peaked spatio-temporal shapes, allows for the production of photons in an n-time-bin superposition state where each time-bin has an arbitrarily defined amplitude and phase. These photons can be used as photonic qubits, qutrits and qquads, and their properties have been tested using a small linear-optics network.