Beam-splitter operations are widely used to process information encoded in bosonic modes. In hybrid quantum systems, however, it might be challenging to implement a reliable beam-splitter operation between two distinct bosonic modes. Without beam-splitters, some basic operations such as decoupling modes and swapping states between modes can become highly non-trivial or not feasible at all. In this work, we develop novel interference-based protocols for decoupling and swapping selected modes of a multimode bosonic system without requiring beam-splitters. Specifically, for a given generic coupler characterized by a Gaussian unitary process, we show how to decouple a single mode or swap any pair of modes with a constant depth sequence of operations, while maintaining the coupling for the remaining system. These protocols require only multiple uses of the given coupler, interleaved with single-mode Gaussian unitary operations, and thus enable efficient construction of operations crucial to quantum information science, such as high-fidelity quantum transduction. Our results are directly derived from fundamental physical properties of bosonic systems and are therefore broadly applicable to various existing platforms.
Beam-splitter operations are widely used to process information encoded in bosonic modes. In hybrid quantum systems, however, it might be challenging to implement a reliable beam-splitter operation between two distinct bosonic modes. Without beam-splitters, some basic operations such as decoupling modes and swapping states between modes can become highly non-trivial or not feasible at all. In this work, we develop novel interference-based protocols for decoupling and swapping selected modes of a multimode bosonic system without requiring beam-splitters. Specifically, for a given generic coupler characterized by a Gaussian unitary process, we show how to decouple a single mode or swap any pair of modes with a constant depth sequence of operations, while maintaining the coupling for the remaining system. These protocols require only multiple uses of the given coupler, interleaved with single-mode Gaussian unitary operations, and thus enable efficient construction of operations crucial to quantum information science, such as high-fidelity quantum transduction. Our results are directly derived from fundamental physical properties of bosonic systems and are therefore broadly applicable to various existing platforms.
Abstract Beam-splitter operations are an indispensable resource for processing quantum information encoded in bosonic modes. In hybrid quantum systems, however, it can be challenging to implement reliable beam-splitters between two distinct modes due to various experimental imperfections. Without beam-splitters, realizing arbitrary Gaussian operations between bosonic modes can become highly non-trivial or even infeasible. In this work, we develop interference-based protocols for engineering Gaussian operations in multi-mode hybrid bosonic systems without requiring beam-splitters. Specifically, for a given generic multi-mode Gaussian unitary coupler, we demonstrate a universal scheme for constructing Gaussian operations on a desired subset of the modes, requiring only multiple uses of the given coupler interleaved with single-mode Gaussian unitaries. Our results provide efficient construction of operations crucial to quantum information science, and are derived from fundamental physical properties of bosonic systems. The proposed scheme is thus widely applicable to existing platforms and couplers, with the exception of certain edge cases. We introduce a systematic approach to identify and treat these edge cases by utilizing an intrinsically invariant structure associated with our interference-based construction.
Gaussian states, operations, and measurements are central building blocks for continuous-variable quantum information processing which paves the way for abundant applications, especially including network-based quantum computation and communication. To make the most use of the Gaussian processes, it is required to understand and utilize suitable mathematical tools such as the symplectic space, symplectic algebra, and Wigner representation. Applying these mathematical tools to practical quantum scenarios, we developed various schemes for quantum transduction, interference-based bosonic mode permutation and bosonic sensing. We demonstrated that generic coupler characterized by Gaussian unitary process can be transformed into a high-fidelity transducer, assuming the access to infinite squeezing and adaptive feedforward with homodyne measurements. To address the practical limitation of finite squeezing, we explored the interference-based protocols. These protocols let us freely permute bosonic modes only assuming the access to single-mode Gaussian operations and multiple uses of a given multi-mode Gaussian process. Thus, such a scheme not only enables universal decoupling for bosonic systems, which is useful for suppressing undesired coupling between the system and the environment, but also faithful bidirectional single-mode quantum transduction. Moreover, noticing that the Gaussian processes are appropriate theoretical models for optical sensors, we studied the quantum noise theory for optical parameter sensing and its potential in providing great measurement precision enhancement. We also extended the Gaussian theories to discrete variable systems, with several examples such as quantum (gate) teleportation. All the analyses originated from the fundamental quantum commutation relations, and therefore are widely applicable.
We construct efficient deterministic dynamical decoupling schemes protecting continuous-variable degrees of freedom. Our schemes target decoherence induced by quadratic system-bath interactions with analytic time dependence. We show how to suppress such interactions to Nth order using only N pulses. Furthermore, we show how to homogenize a 2^{m}-mode bosonic system using only (N+1)^{2m+1} pulses, yielding-up to the Nth order-an effective evolution described by noninteracting harmonic oscillators with identical frequencies. The decoupled and homogenized system provides natural decoherence-free subspaces for encoding quantum information. Our schemes only require pulses which are tensor products of single-mode passive Gaussian unitaries and swap gates between pairs of modes.
Since the early days of quantum information science, diverse strategies have been proposed to encode qubits and implement quantum gates across various physical platforms. Modes and bosonic states offer a flexible framework for quantum information processing, from single-photon optics to superconducting circuits, combining massless and massive particles. Universal gate sets have been established for specific encodings—such as those based on Fock states or the field’s quadratures. However, a general framework clarifying how different bosonic resources—such as mode structure, particle-number statistics, Gaussian and non-Gaussian states and operations—combine to enable universality and potential quantum advantage irrespectively of the encoding remains lacking. A main difficulty lies in the coexistence of distinct paradigms that appear to combine loosely in bosonic quantum information: discrete-variable schemes—where information is encoded in qubits or effective finite-dimensional systems—and continuous-variable schemes—which rely on infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces associated with the field’s quadratures. Despite the success of each approach, they remain seemingly incompatible in many aspects—in particular in terms of physical resource analysis for universality—due to their underlying mathematical differences. In this work, we apply a superselection-rule-compliant framework for bosonic quantum information that unifies these paradigms. This representation explicitly incorporates the phase reference and enforces total particle number conservation, allowing for a consistent treatment of bosonic quantum information protocols and resources across both discrete and continuous regimes. We derive necessary and sufficient conditions expressed in terms of Gaussian and non-Gaussian resources for universality that apply to any encoding, without resorting to specific mappings. Our results show that continuous variable encodings are not fundamentally distinct from discrete ones, but rather emerge as subspaces within a general bosonic structure. Importantly, in such a widely studied framework, non-Gaussian properties of bosonic states and operations can be washed out, providing evidence that the continuous variables regime is not the most suitable to fully assess the quantum properties of bosons.
Boson sampling arising from multiphoton interference in linear-optical networks is a prominent non-universal model for quantum computation. Here, by encoding the multi-qubit state to bosonic Fock state, we present a scalable quantum-circuit framework for simulating boson sampling on a universal quantum computing platform. Beginning with balanced beam-splitter transformations on the single- and two-photon sectors, we derive equivalent quantum-circuit implementations and unify them within a common Hilbert-space representation using an ancilla-assisted encoding. This construction is then generalized to arbitrary interferometers by replacing each optical beam splitter with a repeating quantum-circuit unit that selectively acts only within the relevant local interference subspace, requiring N+1 qubits for a two-photon N-mode interferometer and a linear-overhead subspace-identification procedure. Using this framework, gate-based quantum circuit for a four-mode boson-sampling circuit is developed and experimentally implemented on a four-qubit gate-based photonic qubit system. The qubit framework for emulating boson sampling of n−photons in m−mode will be useful to solve a broad class of sampling complexity problem on a gate-based quantum computers.
We improve Gaussian-boson-sampling circuits by integrating the unitary-averaging (UA) protocol, previously demonstrated to protect unknown Gaussian states from phase errors [Swain et al., Phys. Rev. A 110, 032622 (2024)]. Our work extends the applicability of UA to mitigate arbitrary interferometric noise, including beam-splitter and phase-shifter imperfections. Through comprehensive numerical analysis, we demonstrate that UA consistently achieves higher fidelity and success probability than unprotected circuits, establishing its robustness in noisy conditions. Remarkably, enhancement is maintained across varying numbers of modes with respect to the noise. We further derive a power-law formula predicting performance gains in large-scale systems, including 100-mode and 216-mode configurations. A detailed step-by-step algorithm for implementing the UA protocol is also provided, offering a practical road map for advancing near-term quantum technologies.