In the age of the post-Moore era, the next-generation computing model would be a hybrid architecture consisting of different physical components, such as photonic chips. In 2008, it was proposed that the solving of the NAND-tree problem can be sped up by quantum walk. This scheme is groundbreaking due to the universality of the NAND gate. However, experimental demonstration has not been achieved so far, mostly due to the challenge in preparing the propagating initial state. Here we propose an alternative solution by including a structure called a "quantum slide," where a propagating Gaussian wave packet can be generated deterministically along a properly engineered chain. In our experimental demonstration, the optical NAND tree is capable of solving computational problems with a total of four input bits, based on the femtosecond laser 3D direct-writing technique on a photonic chip. These results remove one main roadblock to photonic NAND-tree computation, and the construction of a quantum slide may find other interesting applications in quantum information and quantum optics.
In the age of the post-Moore era, the next-generation computing model would be a hybrid architecture consisting of different physical components, such as photonic chips. In 2008, it was proposed that the solving of the NAND-tree problem can be sped up by quantum walk. This scheme is groundbreaking due to the universality of the NAND gate. However, experimental demonstration has not been achieved so far, mostly due to the challenge in preparing the propagating initial state. Here we propose an alternative solution by including a structure called a "quantum slide," where a propagating Gaussian wave packet can be generated deterministically along a properly engineered chain. In our experimental demonstration, the optical NAND tree is capable of solving computational problems with a total of four input bits, based on the femtosecond laser 3D direct-writing technique on a photonic chip. These results remove one main roadblock to photonic NAND-tree computation, and the construction of a quantum slide may find other interesting applications in quantum information and quantum optics.
Continuous-time quantum walk is one of the alternative approaches to quantum computation, where a universal set of quantum gates can be achieved by scattering a quantum walker on some specially-designed structures embedded in a sparse graph [Childs, Phys. Rev. Lett. 2009]. Recent advances in femtosecond laser-inscribed optical waveguides represent a promising physical platform for realizing this quantum-walk model of quantum computation. However, the major challenge is the problem of preparing a plane-wave initial state. Previously, the idea of quantum slide has been proposed and experimentally realized for demonstrating the working principle of NAND tree [Wang et al. Phy. Rev. Lett. 2020]. Here we show how quantum slide can be further applied to realize universal quantum computation, bypassing the plane-wave requirement. Specifically, we apply an external field to the perfect-state-transfer chain, which can generate a moving Gaussian wave packet with an arbitrary momentum. When the phase is properly tuned, the universal gate set in Childs' proposal can be realized in our scheme. Furthermore, we show that the gate fidelities increase with the length of the slide, and can reach unity asymptotically.
Quantum walks, in virtue of the coherent superposition and quantum interference, have exponential superiority over their classical counterpart in applications of quantum searching and quantum simulation. The quantum-enhanced power is highly related to the state space of quantum walks, which can be expanded by enlarging the photon number and/or the dimensions of the evolution network, but the former is considerably challenging due to probabilistic generation of single photons and multiplicative loss. We demonstrate a two-dimensional continuous-time quantum walk by using the external geometry of photonic waveguide arrays, rather than the inner degree of freedoms of photons. Using femtosecond laser direct writing, we construct a large-scale three-dimensional structure that forms a two-dimensional lattice with up to 49 × 49 nodes on a photonic chip. We demonstrate spatial two-dimensional quantum walks using heralded single photons and single photon-level imaging. We analyze the quantum transport properties via observing the ballistic evolution pattern and the variance profile, which agree well with simulation results. We further reveal the transient nature that is the unique feature for quantum walks of beyond one dimension. An architecture that allows a quantum walk to freely evolve in all directions and at a large scale, combining with defect and disorder control, may bring up powerful and versatile quantum walk machines for classically intractable problems.
Abstract Over the last 20 years quantum walks (QWs) have gained increasing interest in the field of quantum information science and processing. In contrast to classical walkers, quantum objects exhibit intrinsic properties like non-locality and non-classical many-particle correlations, which renders QWs a versatile tool for quantum simulation and computation as well as for a deeper understanding of genuine quantum mechanics. Since they are highly controllable and hardly interact with their environment, photons seem to be ideally suited quantum walkers. In order to study and exploit photonic QWs, lattice structures that allow low loss coherent evolution of quantum states are demanded. Such requirements are perfectly met by integrated optical waveguide devices that additionally allow a substantial miniaturization of experimental settings. Moreover, by utilizing the femtosecond direct laser writing technique three-dimensional waveguide structures are capable of analyzing QWs also on higher dimensional geometries. In this context, advances and findings of photonic QWs are discussed in this review. Various concepts and experimental results are presented covering, such as different quantum transport regimes, the Boson sampling problem, and the discrete fractional quantum Fourier transform.
Search on improved-glued-binary-trees is a representative example of quantum superiority, where exponential acceleration can be achieved using quantum walk with respect to any classical algorithms. Here we analyzed the evolution process of this quantum-walk-based algorithm. Several remarkable features of the process are revealed. Generation of the model by introducing tunable defect strength and double defects is also discussed and the effects of these generalization on evolution process, arrival probability and residual probability are discussed in details. Physical implementation with silicon ridge waveguide array is presented. The design of the array with FEM method are presented and light propagation simulation with FDTD method shows that this kind of structure is feasible for the task. Lastly, preliminary experimental demonstration with classical coherent light simulation are presented. Our results show that silicon photonic chips are suitable for such search problems and opening a route towards large-scale photonic quantum computation.
Quantum computers promise to be able to solve tasks beyond the reach of standard computational platforms.Among the others, photonic quantum walks prove to be great candidates for their implementation, since single photon sources, passive linear optics and photo-detectors are sufficient for universal quantum computation.To this aim, a device performing the quantum Fourier transform represents a fundamental building block for quantum algorithms, whose applications are not limited to the field of quantum computation.Recently, an algorithm has been developed to efficiently realize a quantum Fourier transform of an input photonic state by using a quantum walk on elementary linear-optical components.Here we provide a simple operative description of the algorithm, introducing a whole class of quantum transformations achievable through a generalization of this procedure.We finally discuss how femtosecond laser writing technology well represents an efficient and scalable platform for the implementation of this class of photonic quantum walks.
Femtosecond laser direct writing (FLDW) technique has been widely applied for fabrications of various photonic quantum chips in glass, such as chips for quantum computation, quantum walk, quantum simulation and quantum metrology. Photonic quantum logic gates are the building blocks for the realization of linear optical universal quantum computation. Up to now, several photonic quantum logic gates have been fabricated by FLDW, such as polarization encoded Hadamard (H) gate, Controlled NOT (CNOT) gate, herald CNOT gate and path encoded herald Controlled phase (CZ) gate and CNOT gate. By combining several single-qubit and two-qubit gates together, the constructed quantum circuits can realize some special functions, such as generating entangled states and perform quantum computation algorithms. Based on the successful fabrication of path encoded CNOT gate by FLDW, we further realized the fabrication of photonic quantum chips by cascading one H gate and one CNOT gate at the control qubit to generate path encoded Bell states, whose fidelity of truth table can reach 97.60.3%. Further, we cascaded one H gate and two parallel CNOT gates at the same control qubit to generate path encoded GHZ states, but which need three photons. Both Bell states and GHZ states are important entangled photon resources, which are widely used in quantum communication and quantum computation, and both combinations of logic gates above can be applied in many quantum circuits, so this work is of great importance and lays the technical foundation for the FLDW of more complex and powerful photonic quantum computation chips.