At present, the human society is stepping into the era of the interconnection of everything, every moment there are massive data needs to be transmitted and processed. With the massive growth of data information, people put forward a higher demand for the information processing ability of network, so the photon information processing technology was put forward. Photonic information processing technology refers to the technology of processing optical information directly in the optical domain. It breaks through the bottleneck of bandwidth and rate of traditional electrical information processing, and has become a solution of ultra-high speed information processing. In addition, the latest technology makes quantum information processing technology possible, which provides a promising platform for applications and research in a variety of contexts. This paper begins with photon generation and transitions from photon information processing technology to quantum information processing technology. The purpose of this paper is to provide the reader with a comprehensive review of the field, showing a balance between theoretical and experimental technical results.
At present, the human society is stepping into the era of the interconnection of everything, every moment there are massive data needs to be transmitted and processed. With the massive growth of data information, people put forward a higher demand for the information processing ability of network, so the photon information processing technology was put forward. Photonic information processing technology refers to the technology of processing optical information directly in the optical domain. It breaks through the bottleneck of bandwidth and rate of traditional electrical information processing, and has become a solution of ultra-high speed information processing. In addition, the latest technology makes quantum information processing technology possible, which provides a promising platform for applications and research in a variety of contexts. This paper begins with photon generation and transitions from photon information processing technology to quantum information processing technology. The purpose of this paper is to provide the reader with a comprehensive review of the field, showing a balance between theoretical and experimental technical results.
Photonic quantum technologies represent a promising platform for several applications, ranging from long-distance communications to the simulation of complex phenomena. Indeed, the advantages offered by single photons do make them the candidate of choice for carrying quantum information in a broad variety of areas with a versatile approach. Furthermore, recent technological advances are now enabling first concrete applications of photonic quantum information processing. The goal of this manuscript is to provide the reader with a comprehensive review of the state of the art in this active field, with a due balance between theoretical, experimental and technological results. When more convenient, we will present significant achievements in tables or in schematic figures, in order to convey a global perspective of the several horizons that fall under the name of photonic quantum information.
Photons have been a flagship system for studying quantum mechanics, advancing quantum information science, and developing quantum technologies. Quantum entanglement, teleportation, quantum key distribution, and early quantum computing demonstrations were pioneered in this technology because photons represent a naturally mobile and low-noise system with quantum-limited detection readily available. The quantum states of individual photons can be manipulated with very high precision using interferometry, an experimental staple that has been under continuous development since the 19th century. The complexity of photonic quantum computing devices and protocol realizations has raced ahead as both underlying technologies and theoretical schemes have continued to develop. Today, photonic quantum computing represents an exciting path to medium- and large-scale processing. It promises to put aside its reputation for requiring excessive resource overheads due to inefficient two-qubit gates. Instead, the ability to generate large numbers of photons—and the development of integrated platforms, improved sources and detectors, novel noise-tolerant theoretical approaches, and more—have solidified it as a leading contender for both quantum information processing and quantum networking. Our concise review provides a flyover of some key aspects of the field, with a focus on experiment. Apart from being a short and accessible introduction, its many references to in-depth articles and longer specialist reviews serve as a launching point for deeper study of the field.
Encoding and processing quantum information in the time-of-arrival of photons offer significant advantages for quantum information science and technology. These advantages include ease of experimental realization, robustness over photon state transmission, and compatibility with existing telecommunication infrastructure. Additionally, time-of-arrival encoding has the potential for high-rate quantum communication and holds promise for the future development of quantum internet. This review explores the generation, processing, and applications of time-encoded quantum states, focusing on both single-photon states, energy–time entanglement, and time-bin entanglement. We summarize the nonlinear optics platforms and advanced laser and modulation techniques utilized for photon sources that enable quantum information encoding onto the photons' time-of-arrival. We also highlight advanced quantum state processing methods in the time domain, including the Franson interferometry, optical switch-based schemes, and state-of-the-art measurement and detection schemes that allow for high-speed and multi-dimensional quantum operations. Finally, we review the mainstream implementations mainly including the quantum communication demonstrations and outline future directions for developing practical quantum networks leveraging time-encoded photon states.
With high integration density and excellent optical properties, silicon photonics is becoming a promising platform for complete integration and large-scale optical quantum information processing. Scalable quantum information applications need photon generation and detection to be integrated on the same chip, and we have seen that various devices on the silicon photonic chip have been developed for this goal. This paper reviews the relevant research results and state-of-the-art technologies on the silicon photonic chip for scalable quantum applications. Despite the shortcomings, the properties of some components have already met the requirements for further expansion. Furthermore, we point out the challenges ahead and future research directions for on-chip scalable quantum information applications.
We provide an overview of quantum photonic network on chip. We begin from the discussion of the pros and cons of several material platforms for engineering quantum photonic chips. Then we introduce and analyze the basic building blocks and functional units of quantum photonic integrated circuits. In the main part of this review, we focus on the generation and manipulation of quantum states of light on chip and are particularly interested in some applications of advanced integrated circuits with different functionalities for quantum information processing, including quantum communication, quantum computing, and quantum simulation. We emphasize that developing fully integrated quantum photonic chip which contains sources of quantum light, integrate circuits, modulators, quantum storage, and detectors are promising approaches for future quantum photonic technologies. Recent achievements in the large scale photonic chips for linear optical computing are also included. Finally, we illustrate the challenges toward high performance quantum information processing devices and conclude with promising perspectives in this field.
This review presents an overview of the current state-of-the-art in photonics computing, which leverages photons, photons coupled with matter, and optics-related technologies for effective and efficient computational purposes. It covers the history and development of photonics computing and modern analogue computing platforms and architectures, focusing on optimization tasks and neural network implementations. The authors examine special-purpose optimizers, mathematical descriptions of photonics optimizers, and their various interconnections. Disparate applications are discussed, including direct encoding, logistics, finance, phase retrieval, machine learning, neural networks, probabilistic graphical models, and image processing, among many others. The main directions of technological advancement and associated challenges in photonics computing are explored, along with an assessment of its efficiency. Finally, the paper discusses prospects and the field of optical quantum computing, providing insights into the potential applications of this technology.