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Physical Review A

Bloch-Messiah reduction of Gaussian unitaries by Takagi factorization

Gianfranco Cariolaro, Gianfranco L. Pierobon

Published Dec 12, 2016• 48 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The Bloch-Messiah (BM) reduction allows the decomposition of an arbitrarily complicated Gaussian unitary into a very simple scheme in which linear optical components are separated from nonlinear ones. The nonlinear part is due to the squeezing possibly present in the Gaussian unitary. The reduction is usually obtained by exploiting the singular value decomposition (SVD) of the matrices appearing in the Bogoliubov transformation of the given Gaussian unitary. This paper discusses a different approach, where the BM reduction is obtained in a straightforward way. It is based on the Takagi factorization of the (complex and symmetric) squeeze matrix and has the advantage of avoiding several matrix operations of the previous approach (polar decomposition, eigendecomposition, SVD, and Takagi factorization). The theory is illustrated with an application example in which the previous and present approaches are compared.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.94.062109

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The Bloch-Messiah (BM) reduction allows the decomposition of an arbitrarily complicated Gaussian unitary into a very simple scheme in which linear optical components are separated from nonlinear ones. The nonlinear part is due to the squeezing possibly present in the Gaussian unitary. The reduction is usually obtained by exploiting the singular value decomposition (SVD) of the matrices appearing in the Bogoliubov transformation of the given Gaussian unitary. This paper discusses a different approach, where the BM reduction is obtained in a straightforward way. It is based on the Takagi factorization of the (complex and symmetric) squeeze matrix and has the advantage of avoiding several matrix operations of the previous approach (polar decomposition, eigendecomposition, SVD, and Takagi factorization). The theory is illustrated with an application example in which the previous and present approaches are compared.
The Bloch-Messiah (BM) reduction allows the decomposition of an arbitrarily complicated Gaussian unitary into a very simple scheme in which linear optical components are separated from nonlinear ones. It is based on the combined application of the eigendecomposition (EID) and singular value decomposition (SVD) of the two matrices associated to the Bogoliubov transformation of the given Gaussian unitary, with the constraint that the unitary matrices appearing in the SVDs must verify a stringent condition, called in the paper ``rotation condition''. Thus, for a correct evaluation of the BM reduction, one has to choose, among the possible SVD pairs, the pair that meets this condition. The paper develops an approach to this problem, which is based on the introduction of a balancing matrix in the SVDs to fulfill the rotation condition. The theory is illustrated with a few application examples.
In this tutorial, we summarize four important matrix decompositions commonly used in quantum optics, namely the Takagi/Autonne, Bloch–Messiah/Euler, Iwasawa, and Williamson decompositions. The first two of these decompositions are specialized versions of the singular-value decomposition when applied to symmetric or symplectic matrices. The third factors any symplectic matrix in a unique way in terms of matrices that belong to different subgroups of the symplectic group. The last one instead gives the symplectic diagonalization of real, positive definite matrices of even size. While proofs of the existence of these decompositions exist in the literature, we review explicit constructions to implement these decompositions using standard linear algebra packages and functionalities such as singular-value, polar, Schur, and QR decompositions, and matrix square roots and inverses.
Methods to decompose nonlinear optical transformation vary from setting to setting, leading to apparent differences in the treatments used to model photon pair sources, compared to those used to model degenerate down-conversion processes. The Bloch-Messiah reduction of Gaussian processes to single-mode squeezers and passive (linear) unitaries appears juxtaposed against the practicalities of the Schmidt-decomposition for photon pair sources into two-mode squeezers and passive unitaries. Here, we present a general framework which unifies these forms as well as elucidating more general structure in multimode Gaussian transformations. The decomposition is achieved by introducing additional constraints into the Bloch-Messiah reduction used to diagonalise Gaussian processes, these constraints motivated by physical constraints following from the inequivalence of different physical degrees of freedom in a system, ie. the temporal-spectral degrees of freedom vs different spatial modes in a transformation. The result is the emergence of the two-mode squeezing picture from the reduction, as well as the potential to generalise these constraints to accommodate spectral imperfections in a source generating 3-mode continuous variable GHZ-like states. Furthermore, we consider the practical scenario in which a transformation aims to generate a multiphoton entangled state, whereby spatial modes provide desirable degrees of freedom, whilst undesired spectral mode structure contributes noise, and show that this spectral impurity can be efficiently modeled by finding an optimal low dimensional bases for its simulation.
In the field of continuous-variable systems a fundamental role is played by Gaussian unitaries, that is, operators that preserve the Gaussian character of the states. The paper deals with the implementation of an arbitrary multimode Gaussian unitary by means of primitive components, namely, single-mode operators and simple two-mode operators (beam splitters). A partial solution to this problem is provided by the Bloch-Messiah reduction, which gives an architecture consisting of a multimode displacement, a diagonal squeezer, and two rotation operators. In this architecture displacement and squeezing are already formed by primitive components, so that it remains to find the implementation of the rotation operators. To this end, a suitable factorization of unitary matrices allows one to complete the desired implementation with primitive components. The theory is illustrated with an example of application to a four-mode Gaussian unitary.
Gaussian unitaries are specified by a second order polynomial in the bosonic operators, that is, by a quadratic polynomial and a linear term. From the Hamiltonian other equivalent representations of the Gaussian unitaries are obtained, such as Bogoliubov and real symplectic transformations. The paper develops an alternative representation, called complex symplectic transformation, which is more compact and is comprehensive of both Bogoliubov and real symplectic transformations. Moreover, it has other advantages. One of the main results of the theory, not available in the literature, is that the final displacement is not simply given by the linear part of the Hamiltonian, but depends also on the quadratic part. In particular, it is shown that by combining squeezing and rotation, it is possible to achieve a final displacement with an arbitrary amount.