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Physical Review A

Experimental implementation of a quantum walk on a circle with single photons

Zhihao Bian, Jian Li, Xiang Zhan, Jason Twamley, Peng Xue

Published May 19, 2017• 36 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We experimentally implement a quantum walk on a circle in position space. Using a different arrangement of linear optical elements, our experiment realizes clockwise-cycling and counterclockwise-cycling walks. Periodic evolutions in quantum walks on three- and four-node circles with uniform coin flipping for each step and a localized initial walker state are observed, and the full revival of the walker+coin state occurs. Coherent information encoded in the coin state shows the periodic collapse and revival due to the interaction between the coin and walker. The technology to realize clockwise-cycling and counterclockwise-cycling walks can be expanded to simulate a quantum walk on a circle with arbitrary nodes.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.95.052338

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We experimentally implement a quantum walk on a circle in position space. Using a different arrangement of linear optical elements, our experiment realizes clockwise-cycling and counterclockwise-cycling walks. Periodic evolutions in quantum walks on three- and four-node circles with uniform coin flipping for each step and a localized initial walker state are observed, and the full revival of the walker+coin state occurs. Coherent information encoded in the coin state shows the periodic collapse and revival due to the interaction between the coin and walker. The technology to realize clockwise-cycling and counterclockwise-cycling walks can be expanded to simulate a quantum walk on a circle with arbitrary nodes.
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The physical process in the macroscopic world unfolds along a single time direction, while the evolution of a quantum system is reversible in principle. How to recover a quantum system to its past state is a complex issue of both fundamental and practical interests. In this article, we experimentally demonstrate a novel method for recovering the state in quantum walks (QWs), also known as full-state revival. Moreover, we observe two other important phenomena in QWs, recurrence and periodicity, via simplifying and repeatedly implementing the scheme, respectively. Our experiments show that obtaining these phenomena requires neither any information of the initial state nor full information of the coin operations. Our work sheds new light on quantum state engineering and recovery, and the initialization of quantum devices based on QWs.
Quantum walks have wide applications in quantum information, such as universal quantum computation, so it is important to explore properties of quantum walks thoroughly. We propose a novel method to implement discrete-time quantum walks (DTQWs) using only a single qubit, in which both coin and walker are encoded in the two-dimensional state space of a single qubit, operations are realized using single-qubit gates only, and high-dimensional final states of DTQWs can be obtained naturally. With this "one-qubit" approach, DTQW experiments can be realized much more easily, compared with previous methods, in most quantum systems and all properties based on quantum states of DTQWs (such as quantum correlation and coherence) can be investigated. By this approach, we experimentally implement one-particle and two-particle DTQWs with seven steps using single photons. Furthermore, we systematically investigate quantum correlations and coherence (based on the full state of the coin and walker) of the DTQW systems with different initial states of the coin, which have not been obtained and studied in DTQW experiments. As an application, we also study the assisted distillation of quantum coherence using the full state of the two-particle DTQW from the experiment. The maximal increase in distillable coherence for high-dimensional mixed states is investigated for the first time by obtaining its upper and lower bounds. Our work opens a new door to implement DTQW experiments and to better explore properties of quantum walks.
We present the first robust implementation of a coined quantum walk over five steps using only passive optical elements. By employing a fiber network loop we keep the amount of required resources constant as the walker's position Hilbert space is increased. We observed a non-Gaussian distribution of the walker's final position, thus characterizing a faster spread of the photon wave packet in comparison to the classical random walk. The walk is realized for many different coin settings and initial states, opening the way for the implementation of a quantum-walk-based search algorithm.
We analyze the process of a discrete-time quantum walk over 4 steps and 5 positions with linear optics elements. The quantum walk is characterized by a ballistic spread of wavepackets along 4 steps. By employing different initial coin states, we observe non-Gaussian distribution of the walkers' finial position, which characterizes a quadratic enhancement of the spread of photon wavepackets compared to a classical random walk. By introducing controllable decoherence, we observe the quantum-to-classical transmission in a quantum walk architecture.
Abstract Full state revivals in a quantum walk can be viewed as returning of the walker to the initial quantum state in a periodic fashion during the propagation of the walk. In this paper we show that for any given number of spatial dimensions, a coin operator can be constructed to generate a quantum walk having full revivals with any desired period. From the point of view of quantum computation and simulations, these coin operators can be useful in implementing quantum walks, which oscillate between any two states with a finite periodicity.