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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

Optical approach to quantum computing

T. B. Pittman, J. D. Franson

Published Jul 6, 1998• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We describe an on-going experimental investigation of a newly predicted mechanism for the production of nonlinear interactions between two photons. This mechanism involves nonlocal cooperative effects between pairs of atoms and exists only at the quantum level. An optical approach to quantum computing based on this effect may have many practical advantages.

DOI
10.1117/12.312646

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We describe an on-going experimental investigation of a newly predicted mechanism for the production of nonlinear interactions between two photons. This mechanism involves nonlocal cooperative effects between pairs of atoms and exists only at the quantum level. An optical approach to quantum computing based on this effect may have many practical advantages.
Nonlinear interactions between two photons would have many potential applications, including the implementation of quantum logic gates for use in quantum computing. We are investigating a new mechanism for nonlinear optics at the two-photon level that is based on the exchange of photons by pairs of atoms in a medium, such as an atomic vapor. The effect can be understood as being due to a factor of two increase in the probability of having two excited atoms in the medium compared to the case in which the two photons propagate in two separate media. These effects are expected to be sufficiently large that cavities and traps should not be required, which may eventually allow the construction of large numbers of simple quantum logic gates. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
The operation of a quantum computer is inherently nonlocal due to the entanglement of separated quantum gates. This paper is concerned instead with the use of nonlocal effects to construct the quantum gates themselves. A nonlocal interaction in which pairs of atoms exchange two photons is expected to produce a large nonlinear phase shift. An interesting feature of this effect is that energy is not conserved at the location of an individual atom but it is conserved overall. The preliminary results from a series of experiments in a sodium vapor cell are in apparent agreement with the predictions of the theory. These nonlinear phase shifts can be used to construct quantum logic gates, such as a Controlled-NOT.
Summary form only given.Nonlinear optical effects are normally limited to high-intensity fields containing a large number of photons because the electric field associated with a single photon is usually very weak. Nonlinear phase shifts at the two-photon level previously have been observed using high-Q cavities and atomic beams. The authors recently predicted that nonlocal effects involving pairs of atoms in a medium could enhance the nonlinear interaction between two photons to the point that nonlinear phase shifts could be obtained in an ordinary medium without the use of resonant cavities.