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Benchmarking the Future-Proofedness of Photonic Quantum Systems

Johannes Tiedau, Melanie Engelkemeier, Benjamin Brecht, Jan Sperling, Christine Silberhorn

Published Aug 26, 2020• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Targeting at the realization of scalable photonic quantum technologies, the generation of many photons, their propagating in large optical networks, and a subsequent detection and analysis of sophisticated quantum correlations is essential for the understanding of macroscopic quantum systems. In this experimental contribution, we explore the joint operation of all mentioned ingredients. We benchmark our time-multiplexing framework that includes a high-performance source of multi-photon states and a large multiplexing network, together with unique detectors with high photon-number resolution, readily available for distributing quantum light and measuring complex quantum correlations. Using an adaptive approach that employs flexible time bins, rather than static ones, we successfully verify high-order nonclassical correlations of many photons distributed over many modes. By exploiting the symmetry of our system and using powerful analysis tools, we can analyze correlations that would be inaccessible by classical means otherwise. In particular, we produce in the order of ten photons and distribute them over sixty-four modes. Nonclassicality is verified with correlation functions up to the one hundred and twenty-eighth order and statistical significances of up to twenty standard deviations.

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Targeting at the realization of scalable photonic quantum technologies, the generation of many photons, their propagating in large optical networks, and a subsequent detection and analysis of sophisticated quantum correlations is essential for the understanding of macroscopic quantum systems. In this experimental contribution, we explore the joint operation of all mentioned ingredients. We benchmark our time-multiplexing framework that includes a high-performance source of multi-photon states and a large multiplexing network, together with unique detectors with high photon-number resolution, readily available for distributing quantum light and measuring complex quantum correlations. Using an adaptive approach that employs flexible time bins, rather than static ones, we successfully verify high-order nonclassical correlations of many photons distributed over many modes. By exploiting the symmetry of our system and using powerful analysis tools, we can analyze correlations that would be inaccessible by classical means otherwise. In particular, we produce in the order of ten photons and distribute them over sixty-four modes. Nonclassicality is verified with correlation functions up to the one hundred and twenty-eighth order and statistical significances of up to twenty standard deviations.
Targeting at the realization of scalable photonic quantum technologies, the generation of many photons, their propagation in large optical networks, and a subsequent detection and analysis of sophisticated quantum correlations are essential for the understanding of macroscopic quantum systems. In this experimental contribution, we explore the joint operation of all mentioned ingredients. We benchmark our time-multiplexing framework that includes a high-performance source of multiphoton states and a large multiplexing network, together with unique detectors with high photon-number resolution, readily available for distributing quantum light and measuring complex quantum correlations. Using an adaptive approach that employs flexible time bins, rather than static ones, we successfully verify high-order nonclassical correlations of many photons distributed over many modes. By exploiting the symmetry of our system and using powerful analysis tools, we can analyze correlations that would be inaccessible by classical means otherwise. In particular, we produce on the order of ten photons and distribute them over 64 modes. Nonclassicality is verified with correlation functions up to the 128th order and statistical significances of up to 20 standard deviations.
Two important challenges in quantum photonics are to generate useful states with high fidelity, and to detect them and verify their properties. Particularly valuable states are single photons and entangled photon pairs in well-defined optical modes, as they can be used in many quantum information protocols or used to build up more complex states. For sources, we employ integrated nonlinear optics (waveguides in lithium niobite and potassium titanyl phosphate) to maximize brightness and go beyond what is possible in bulk optics, showing simultaneously high state fidelity, heralding efficiency, and spectral purity across three experiments: first we show record heralding efficiency in a fully-fibered heralded single-photon source, and use it to probe the tradeoff between spectral purity and heralding efficiency in non-engineered sources. With an engineered source, we then herald up to 50 photons in a nonclassical state. The last source is for polarization-entangled photon pairs, with brightness of 3.5 million pairs/s·mW, fidelity to a Bell state of 96%, heralding efficiency of 43%, and HOM interference visibility of 82%. Once a complex state is constructed, it must also be verified. For this we employ a time-multiplexed detector consisting of a fibre loop and a single-photon detector. Surprisingly, we are able to extract information even in the saturation regime of the detector. We use the click statistics of the time-multiplexed detector to verify the non-classicality of quantum light, and we use its extremely high dynamic range (123 dB) to measure a macroscopic power level with a single-photon detector. Eliminating calibrated attenuators with this approach will allow direct standardization of quantum and classical optical power levels.
We report on the implementation of a time-multiplexed click detection scheme to probe quantum correlations between different spatial optical modes. We demonstrate that such measurement setups can uncover nonclassical correlations in multimode light fields even if the single mode reductions are purely classical. The nonclassical character of correlated photon pairs, generated by a parametric down-conversion, is immediately measurable employing the theory of click counting instead of low-intensity approximations with photoelectric detection models. The analysis is based on second- and higher-order moments, which are directly retrieved from the measured click statistics, for relatively high mean photon numbers. No data postprocessing is required to demonstrate the effects of interest with high significance, despite low efficiencies and experimental imperfections. Our approach shows that such novel detection schemes are a reliable and robust way to characterize quantum-correlated light fields for practical applications in quantum communications.
Single photon sources can be used to generate and control highly non-classical states of light. Here, we consider the possibility of generating bi-partite entanglement between two separate multi-photon states by splitting the input modes of the single photon sources into a mode distributed to AAA and a mode distributed to BBB. If multiple photons are combined at AAA and at BBB, the large variety of photon patterns observed after linear optics transformations of the local multi-mode systems can be used to characterize the non-classical correlation of this entangled state. However, the transformation between different photon number states in linear optics is a complicated problem, and further analysis is needed to understand the possible applications of this scalable quantum system. To obtain maximal complementarity between two measurements, we consider the unbiased interference of all input modes represented by a discrete Fourier transform of the multi-mode field. We identify characteristic patterns that can be used to identify non-classical correlations between the two multi-photon systems at AAA and BBB and derive a quantitative criterion for entanglement verification. Our results indicate that the large scale quantum operations can be achieved by a comparatively simple quantum network interfering the outputs of multiple single photons, where the size of the system mainly depends on the number of available single photon sources.
Photonic qubits constitute a leading platform to disruptive quantum technologies due to their unique low-noise properties. The cost of the photonic approach is the non-deterministic nature of many of the processes, including single-photon generation, which arises from parametric sources and negligible interaction between photons. Active temporal multiplexing - repeating a generation process in time and rerouting to single modes using an optical switching network - is a promising approach to overcome this challenge and will likely be essential for large-scale applications with greatly reduced resource complexity and system sizes. Requirements include the precise synchronization of a system of low-loss switches, delay lines, fast photon detectors, and feed-forward. Here we demonstrate temporal multiplexing of 8 'bins' from a double-passed heralded photon source and observe an increase in the heralding and heralded photon rates. This system points the way to harnessing temporal multiplexing in quantum technologies, from single-photon sources to large-scale computation.