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Science

Going quantum with metamaterials

Ian S. Osborne

Published Sep 13, 2018• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Metamaterials Metasurfaces should allow wafer-thin surfaces to replace bulk optical components. Two reports now demonstrate that metasurfaces can be extended into the quantum optical regime. Wang et al. determined the quantum state of multiple photons by simply passing them through a dielectric metasurface, scattering them into single-photon detectors. Stav et al. used a dielectric metasurface to generate entanglement between spin and orbital angular momentum of single photons. The results should aid the development of integrated quantum optic circuits operating on a nanophotonic platform. Science , this issue p. [1104][1], p. [1101][2] [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.aat8196 [2]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.aat9042

DOI
10.1126/science.361.6407.1083-g

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Metasurfaces should allow wafer-thin surfaces to replace bulk optical components. Two reports now demonstrate that metasurfaces can be extended into the quantum optical regime. Wang et al. determined the quantum state of multiple photons by simply passing them through a dielectric metasurface, scattering them into single-photon detectors. Stav et al. used a dielectric metasurface to generate entanglement between spin and orbital angular momentum of single photons. The results should aid the development of integrated quantum optic circuits operating on a nanophotonic platform.
Science , this issue p. 1104, p. 1101
Metamaterials have been a major research area for more than two decades now, involving artificial structures with predesigned electromagnetic properties constructed from deep subwavelength building blocks. They have been used to demonstrate a wealth of fascinating phenomena ranging from negative refractive index and epsilon-near-zero to cloaking, emulations of general relativity effects, and super-resolution imaging, to name a few. In the past few years, metamaterials have been suggested as a new platform for quantum optics, and several pioneering experiments have already been carried out with single photons. Here, we employ a dielectric metasurface to generate entanglement between spin and orbital angular momentum of single photons. We demonstrate experimentally the generation of the four Bell states by utilizing the geometric phase arising from the photonic spin-orbit interaction. These are the first experiments with entangled states with metasurfaces, and as such they are paving the way to the new area of quantum metamaterials.
Metasurface Entangles and Distributes PhotonsPhotons passing through a specially engineered wafer emerge entangled and spread among multiple output channels. By Charles Day Before photon pairs can serve as conveyors of quantum information, they must be generated, entangled, and distributed.Each of those steps typically entails using at least one bulky, carefully aligned optical component.Mu Wang of Nanjing University in China and his collaborators have now shown that they can realize both entanglement and distribution with a single, passive metasurface [1].The feat, which relies on tailoring quantum interference, boosts prospects that photon-based quantum technologies could be miniaturized.
Metamaterials constructed from deep subwavelength building blocks have been used to demonstrate phenomena ranging from negative refractive index and ε-near-zero to cloaking, emulations of general relativity, and superresolution imaging. More recently, metamaterials have been suggested as a new platform for quantum optics. We present the use of a dielectric metasurface to generate entanglement between the spin and orbital angular momentum of photons. We demonstrate the generation of the four Bell states on a single photon by using the geometric phase that arises from the photonic spin-orbit interaction and subsequently show nonlocal correlations between two photons that interacted with the metasurface. Our results show that metamaterials are suitable for the generation and manipulation of entangled photon states, introducing the area of quantum optics metamaterials.
Metasurfaces based on resonant nanophotonic structures have enabled innovative types of flat-optics devices that often outperform the capabilities of bulk components, yet these advances remain largely unexplored for quantum applications. We show that nonclassical multiphoton interferences can be achieved at the subwavelength scale in all-dielectric metasurfaces. We simultaneously image multiple projections of quantum states with a single metasurface, enabling a robust reconstruction of amplitude, phase, coherence, and entanglement of multiphoton polarization-encoded states. One- and two-photon states are reconstructed through nonlocal photon correlation measurements with polarization-insensitive click detectors positioned after the metasurface, and the scalability to higher photon numbers is established theoretically. Our work illustrates the feasibility of ultrathin quantum metadevices for the manipulation and measurement of multiphoton quantum states, with applications in free-space quantum imaging and communications.
From metamaterials to metasurfaces, optical nano-structure has been widely investigated for novel and high efficiency functionalities. Apart from the intrisinsic properties of composite material, rich capabilities can be derived from the judicious design of metasurfaces, which enable more excellent and highly integrated optical devices than traditional bulk optical elements. In the meantime, the abundant manipulation abilites of light in the classical domain can be carried over into quantum domain. In this review, we highlight recent development of quantum optics based on metasurfaces, ranging from quantum plasmonics, generation, manipulation and appplication of quantum light to quantum vaccum engineering etc. Finally, some promising avenues for quantum optics with the help of optical metasurface are presented.