Simulating Arbitrary Quantum Statistics with Entangled Photons

Harald Weinfurter

Jonathan C. F. Matthews, Konstantinos Poulios, Jasmin D. A. Meinecke +6 more

Quantum mechanics defines two classes of particles-bosons and fermions-whose exchange statistics fundamentally dictate quantum dynamics. Here we develop a scheme that uses entanglement to directly observe the correlated detection statistics of any number of fermions in any physical process. This approach relies on sending each of the entangled particles through identical copies of the process and by controlling a single phase parameter in the entangled state, the correlated detection statistics can be continuously tuned between bosonic and fermionic statistics. We implement this scheme via two entangled photons shared across the polarisation modes of a single photonic chip to directly mimic the fermion, boson and intermediate behaviour of two-particles undergoing a continuous time quantum walk. The ability to simulate fermions with photons is likely to have applications for verifying boson scattering and for observing particle correlations in analogue simulation using any physical platform that can prepare the entangled state prescribed here.

Luiz Carlos Ryff

Ivo Straka, Jaromír Mika, Miroslav Ježek

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a device for generating light with arbitrary classical photon-number distribution. We use programmable acousto-optical modulation to control the intensity of light within the dynamic range of more than 30 dB and inter-level transitions faster than 500 ns. We propose a universal method that allows the high-fidelity generation of user-defined photon statistics. Extremely high precision <0.001 can be reached for lower photon numbers, and faithful tail behavior can be reached for very high photon numbers. We demonstrate arbitrary statistics generation for up to 500 photons. The proposed device can produce any classical light statistics with given parameters including Poissonian, super-Poissonian, thermal, and heavy-tailed distributions like log-normal. The presented method can be used to simulate communication channels, calibrate the response of photon-number-resolving detectors, or probe physical phenomena sensitive to photon statistics.

Simon Bolduc Beaudoin, Edouard Pinsolle, Bertrand Reulet

We report measurements of counting statistics, average and variance, of microwave photons of ill-defined frequency: bichromatic photons, i.e., photons involving two well separated frequencies, and “white” broadband photons. Our setup allows for the analysis of single photonic modes of arbitrary waveform over the 1–10 GHz frequency range. The photon statistics are obtained by on-the-fly numerical calculation from the sampled time-dependent voltage. Using an ac + dc biased tunnel junction as a source of quantum microwave, we report an ultrawide squeezing spectrum representing a competitive source for entanglement generation (up to 0.9 billion measured entangled bits per second) easily achievable experimentally. We also report the observation of quantum steering by the tunnel junction, and show how the presence of squeezing of a broadband mode implies the existence of entanglement between two modes it encompasses. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Shengwang Du