Multiphoton propagation in connected structures-a quantum walk-offers the potential of simulating complex physical systems and provides a route to universal quantum computation. Increasing the complexity of quantum photonic networks where the walk occurs is essential for many applications. We implement a quantum walk of indistinguishable photon pairs in a multimode fiber supporting 380 modes. Using wavefront shaping, we control the propagation of the two-photon state through the fiber in which all modes are coupled. Excitation of arbitrary output modes of the system is realized by controlling classical and quantum interferences. This report demonstrates a highly multimode platform for multiphoton interference experiments and provides a powerful method to program a general high-dimensional multiport optical circuit. This work paves the way for the next generation of photonic devices for quantum simulation, computing, and communication.
Multiphoton propagation in connected structures-a quantum walk-offers the potential of simulating complex physical systems and provides a route to universal quantum computation. Increasing the complexity of quantum photonic networks where the walk occurs is essential for many applications. We implement a quantum walk of indistinguishable photon pairs in a multimode fiber supporting 380 modes. Using wavefront shaping, we control the propagation of the two-photon state through the fiber in which all modes are coupled. Excitation of arbitrary output modes of the system is realized by controlling classical and quantum interferences. This report demonstrates a highly multimode platform for multiphoton interference experiments and provides a powerful method to program a general high-dimensional multiport optical circuit. This work paves the way for the next generation of photonic devices for quantum simulation, computing, and communication.
Light is not only an ideal medium to transmit information, but also a very interesting physical system to process it. In this respect, quantum optics has recently emerged as a highly promising domain for the development of new computing applications that can surpass the performances of currently available systems. In this respect, quantum walk of photons has recently emerged as a very powerful model for quantum information science, and integrated photonic devices have proven a versatile architecture for their implementation. While these waveguide structures allow only near-neighbor coupling between up to a few tens of modes, complex linear systems, such as white paint layer or multimode fiber, enable to couple efficiently a huge numbers of optical modes. Unstable and lossy, these systems have always been considered unpractical for quantum optics experiments. Wavefront shaping methods, developed in the last decade to control light propagating in complex media, allow moving beyond these limitations and make them exploitable with non-classical light. In our work, we demonstrate the implementation of quantum walks in a layer of paint and a multimode fiber using single-photons and photon-pairs. For this purpose, we extend wavefront shaping methods, originally developed to control classical light propagation in complex media, to non-classical light. This capability to manipulate photons allows building new controllable highly multimode optical platforms. Such systems pave the way for the next generation of quantum information processing devices.
Multiphoton interference is crucial to many photonic quantum technologies. In particular, interference forms the basis of optical quantum information processing platforms and can lead to significant computational advantages. It is therefore interesting to study the interference arising from various states of light in large interferometric networks. Here, we implement a quantum walk in a highly stable, low-loss, multiport interferometer with up to 12 ultrafast time bins. This time-bin interferometer comprises a sequence of birefringent crystals that produce pulses separated by 4.3 ps, all along a single optical axis. Ultrafast Kerr gating in an optical fiber is employed to time-demultiplex the output from the quantum walk. We measure one-, two-, and three-photon output states arising from various input state combinations, including a heralded single-photon state, a thermal state, and an attenuated coherent state at one or more input ports. Our results demonstrate that ultrafast time bins are a promising platform to observe large-scale multiphoton interference.
Multiphoton interference is crucial to many photonic quantum technologies. In particular, interference forms the basis of optical quantum information processing platforms and can lead to significant computational advantages. It is therefore interesting to study the interference arising from various states of light in large interferometric networks. Here, we implement a quantum walk in a highly stable, low-loss, multiport interferometer with up to 24 ultrafast time bins. This time-bin interferometer comprises a sequence of birefringent crystals which produce pulses separated by 4.3\,ps, all along a single optical axis. Ultrafast Kerr gating in an optical fiber is employed to time-demultiplex the output from the quantum walk. We measure one-, two-, and three-photon interference arising from various input state combinations, including a heralded single-photon state, a thermal state, and an attenuated coherent state at one or more input ports. Our results demonstrate that ultrafast time bins are a promising platform to observe large-scale multiphoton interference.
The ability to implement reconfigurable linear optical circuits is a fundamental building block for the implementation of scalable quantum technologies. Here, we implement such circuits in a multimode fiber by harnessing its complex mixing using wavefront shaping techniques. We program linear transformations involving spatial and polarization modes of the fiber and experimentally demonstrate their accuracy and robustness using two-photon quantum states. In particular, we illustrate the reconfigurability of our platform by emulating a tunable coherent absorption experiment, where output probabilities of single- and two-photon survivals can be controlled. By demonstrating complex, reprogrammable, reliable, linear transformations, with the potential to scale, our results highlight the potential of complex media driven by wavefront shaping for quantum information processing.
Abstract Quantum walks represent paradigmatic quantum evolutions, enabling powerful applications in the context of topological physics and quantum computation. They have been implemented in diverse photonic architectures, but the realization of two-particle dynamics on a multidimensional lattice has hitherto been limited to continuous-time evolutions. To fully exploit the computational capabilities of quantum interference it is crucial to develop platforms handling multiple photons that propagate across multidimensional lattices. Here, we report a discrete-time quantum walk of two correlated photons in a two-dimensional lattice, synthetically engineered by manipulating a set of optical modes carrying quantized amounts of transverse momentum. Mode-couplings are introduced via the polarization-controlled diffractive action of thin geometric-phase optical elements. The entire platform is compact, efficient, scalable, and represents a versatile tool to simulate quantum evolutions on complex lattices. We expect that it will have a strong impact on diverse fields such as quantum state engineering, topological quantum photonics, and Boson Sampling.
Quantum walks in an elaborately designed graph, is a powerful tool simulating physical and topological phenomena, constructing analog quantum algorithms and realizing universal quantum computing. Integrated photonics technology has emerged as a versatile platform to implement various quantum information tasks and a promising candidate to perform large-scale quantum walks. Both extending physical dimensions and involving more particles will increase the complexity of the evolving systems and the desired quantum resources. Pioneer works have demonstrated single particle walking on two-dimensional (2D) lattices and multiple walkers interfering on a one-dimensional structure. However, 2D multi-particle quantum walk, genuinely being not classically simulatable, has been a vacancy for nearly ten years. Here, we present a genuine 2D quantum walk with correlated photons on a triangular photonic lattice, which can be mapped to a state space up to 37X37 dimensions. This breaks through the physically restriction of single-particle evolution, which can encode information in a large space and constitute high-dimensional graphs indeed beneficial to quantum information processing. A site-by-site addressing between the chip facet and the 2D fanout interface enables an observation of over 600 non-classical interferences simultaneously, violating a classical limit up to 57 standard deviations. Our platform offers a promising prospect for multi-photon quantum walks in a large-scale 2D arrangement, paving the way for practical quantum simulation and quantum computation beyond classical regime.