We propose a protocol to create entanglement between emitters in cavity- or waveguide-QED through their decay to a common channel. Heralding on emitters’ states creates desired quantum light states such as cat and GKP.
Collective spontaneous emission occurs when multiple quantum emitters decay into common radiation modes, resulting in enhanced or suppressed emission. Here, we find the quantum state of light collectively emitted from emitters exhibiting quantum correlations. We unveil under what conditions the quantum correlations are not lost during the emission but are instead transferred to the output light. Under these conditions, the inherent nonlinearity of the emitters can be tailored to create desired photonic states in the form of traveling single-mode pulses, such as Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill and Schrödinger-cat states, that are useful for error correction in quantum computation. To facilitate such predictions, our work reveals the multimode nature of collective spontaneous emission, capturing the role of the emitters' positions, losses, interactions, and beyond-Markov dynamics on the emitted quantum state of light. We present manifestations of these effects in different physical systems, with examples of cavity QED, waveguide QED, and atomic arrays with up to a few dozen emitters. Our findings suggest paths for creating and manipulating multiphoton quantum light for bosonic codes in continuous-variable-based quantum computation, communications, and sensing.
We propose a multi-particle ‘which-path’ gedanken experiment with a quantum detector. Contrary to conventional ‘which-path’ experiments, the detector maintains its quantum state during interactions with the particles. We show how such interactions can create an interference pattern that vanishes on average, as in conventional ‘which-path’ schemes, but contains hidden many-body quantum correlations. Measuring the state of the quantum detector projects the joint-particle wavefunction into highly entangled states, such as GHZ’s. Conversely, measuring the particles projects the detector wavefunction into desired states, such as Schrodinger-cat or GKP states for a harmonic-oscillator detector, e.g., a photonic cavity. Our work thus opens a new path to the creation and exploration of many-body quantum correlations in systems not often associated with these phenomena, such as atoms in waveguide QED and free electrons in transmission electron microscopy.
Pulsed coherent and squeezed driving of a spin-S emitter as a deterministic source of Wigner-negative light
Generating propagating Wigner-negative states of light is an important and difficult task for many quantum technologies. Historically, the proposed methods of creating such states have been intrinsically probabilistic, relying on conditional measurements or photon heralding. More recently, methods have been proposed involving the steady-state driving of two-level emitters, where Wigner-negative temporal modes are present in the outgoing field. We theoretically demonstrate through the simulation of a cascaded-systems model that this approach can be improved significantly with pulsed coherent or squeezed driving of a spin-1/2 emitter. This enables the deterministic generation of strongly Wigner-negative states, using only driving-source states with positive Gaussian Wigner distributions. This method is extended to the driving of a spin-S emitter with S≥1 to generate still more exotic, highly non-classical states. The array of states demonstrated in this work includes close approximations to displaced N-photon states, squeezed Schrödinger cat states, and finite-energy Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) states.