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Photonics North (PN)

Quantum State Discrimination with Optical Metasurfaces

Mengfan Jiang, Lin Juan Deng, Kai Wang

Published May 20, 2025• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We demonstrate the potential of inversely designed optical metasurfaces as ultra-thin and scalable elements for quantum state discrimination of single-photon polarization states. By integrating metasurface design with positive operator-valued measure (POVM)-based measurement strategies, we achieve high discrimination success probabilities under practical constraints.

DOI
10.1109/pn66844.2025.11215170

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We demonstrate the potential of inversely designed optical metasurfaces as ultra-thin and scalable elements for quantum state discrimination of single-photon polarization states. By integrating metasurface design with positive operator-valued measure (POVM)-based measurement strategies, we achieve high discrimination success probabilities under practical constraints.
Metasurface enables the generation and manipulation of multiphoton entanglement with flat optics, providing a more efficient platform for large-scale photonic quantum information processing. Here, we show that a single metasurface optical device would allow more efficient characterizations of multiphoton entangled states, such as shadow tomography, which generally requires fast and complicated control of optical setups to perform information-complete measurements, a demanding task using conventional optics. The compact and stable device here allows implementations of general positive operator valued measures with a reduced sample complexity and significantly alleviates the experimental complexity to implement shadow tomography. Integrating self-learning and calibration algorithms, we observe notable advantages in the reconstruction of multiphoton entanglement, including using fewer measurements, having higher accuracy, and being robust against experimental imperfections. Our work unveils the feasibility of metasurface as a favorable integrated optical device for efficient characterization of multiphoton entanglement, and sheds light on scalable photonic quantum technologies with ultra-thin optical devices.
With recent advances in nanophotonics, metasurfaces based on nano-resonators have facilitated novel types of optical devices. In particular, the interplay between different degrees of freedom, involving polarization and spatial modes, boosted classical polarization measurements and imaging applications. However, the use of metasurfaces for measuring the quantum states of light remains largely unexplored. Conventionally, the task of quantum state tomography is realized with several bulk optical elements, which need to be reconfigured multiple times. Such setups can suffer from decoherence, and there is a fundamental and practical interest in developing integrated solutions for measurement of multi-photon quantum states. We present a new concept and the first experimental realization of all-dielectric metasurfaces with no tuneable elements for imaging-based reconstruction of the full quantum state of entangled photons. Most prominently, we implement multi-photon interferometric measurements on a sub-wavelength thin optical element, which delivers ultimate miniaturization and extremely high robustness. Specifically, we realize a highly transparent all-dielectric metasurface, which spatially splits different components of quantum-polarization states. Then, a simple one-shot measurement of correlations with polarization-insensitive on-off click detectors enables complete reconstruction of multi-photon density matrices with high precision. In our experiment, we prepare sets of polarization states and reconstruct their density matrices with a high fidelity of over 99% for single photon states and above 95% for two-photon states. Our work provides a fundamental advance in the imaging of quantum states, where multi-photon quantum interference takes place at sub-wavelength scale.
We develop a concept of metasurface-assisted ghost imaging for nonlocal discrimination between a set of polarization objects. The specially designed metasurfaces are incorporated in the imaging system to perform parallel state transformations in general elliptical bases of quantum-entangled or classically correlated photons. Then, only four or fewer correlation measurements between multiple metasurface outputs and a simple polarization-insensitive bucket detector after the object can allow for the identification of fully or partially transparent polarization elements and their arbitrary orientation angles. The approach can find applications for real-time and low-light imaging across diverse spectral regions in dynamic environments.
Summary form only given. Measurements of quantum states of photons are conventionally performed with series of optical elements in bulk setups [1] or optical chips incorporating multiple tunable beam splitters. Here, we suggest and develop experimentally, for the first time to our knowledge, a new concept of quantum-polarization measurements with a single all-dielectric resonant metasurface [2]. The operating principle is presented in Fig. 1(a): A metasurface spatially splits different components of photon polarization states, which then enables full reconstruction of the photon state based on the photon correlations with simple polarization-insensitive single-photon detectors or EMCCD cameras. The subwavelength thin structure provides an ultimate miniaturization, and can facilitate quantum tomography by spatially-resolved imaging without a need for reconfiguration. Such parallel-detection approach promises not only better robustness and scalability, but also the possibility to study the dynamics of quantum states in real-time.
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