We propose and experimentally verify a scheme to engineer arbitrary states of traveling light field up to the two-photon level. The desired state is remotely prepared in the signal channel of spontaneous parametric down-conversion by means of conditional measurements on the idler channel. The measurement consists of bringing the idler field into interference with two ancilla coherent states, followed by two single-photon detectors, which, in coincidence, herald the preparation event. By varying the amplitudes and phases of the ancillae, we can prepare any arbitrary superposition of zero- one- and two-photon states.
The quantum state of the photon pair generated from type-II spontaneous parametric down-conversion pumped by a ultrafast laser pulse exhibits strong decoherence in its polarization entanglement, an effect which can be attributed to the clock effect of the pump pulse or, equivalently, to distinguishing spectral information in the two-photon state. Here, we propose novel temporal and spectral engineering techniques to eliminate these detrimental decoherence effects. The temporal engineering of the two-photon wavefunction results in a universal Bell-state synthesizer that is independent of the ch…
We discuss the application of dipole blockade techniques for the preparation of single atom and single photon sources. A deterministic protocol is given for loading a single atom in an optical trap as well as ejecting a controlled number of atoms in a desired direction. A single photon source with an optically controlled beam-like emission pattern is described.
We propose to mechanically control photon blockades (PB) in an optomechanical system with driving oscillators. We show that by tuning the mechanical driving parameters we achieve selective single-photon blockade (1PB) or two-photon blockade (2PB) as well as simultaneous 1PB and 2PB at the same frequency. This mechanical engineering of 1PB and 2PB can be understood from the anharmonic energy levels due to the modulation of the mechanical driving. In contrast to the optomechanical systems without any mechanical driving featuring PB only for specific optical detuning, our results can be useful fo…
We study a coherent superposition of field annihilation and creation operator acting on continuous variable systems and propose its application for quantum state engineering. Specifically, it is investigated how the superposed operation transforms a classical state to a nonclassical one, together with emerging nonclassical effects. We also propose an experimental scheme to implement this elementary coherent operation and discuss its usefulness to produce an arbitrary superposition of number states involving up to two photons.
We propose and investigate an optical scheme for probabilistic implementation of an arbitrary single-mode quantum operation that can be expressed as a function of photon number operator. The scheme coherently combines multiple photon addition and subtraction and is feasible with current technology. As concrete examples, we demonstrate that the device can perform approximate noiseless linear amplification of light and can emulate Kerr nonlinearity.
We propose a scheme for continuous detection of itinerant microwave photons in circuit quantum electrodynamics. In the proposed device, a superconducting qubit is coupled dispersively to two resonators: one is used to form an impedance-matched $Λ$ system that deterministically captures incoming photons, and the other is used for continuous monitoring of the event. The present scheme enables efficient photon detection: for realistic system parameters, the detection efficiency reaches 0.9 with a bandwidth of about ten megahertz.
Photonic quantum technology relies on efficient sources of coherent single photons, the ideal carriers of quantum information. Heralded single photons from parametric down-conversion can approximate on-demand single photons to a desired degree, with high spectral purities achieved through group-velocity matching and tailored crystal nonlinearities. Here we propose crystal nonlinearity engineering techniques with sub-coherence-length domains. We first introduce a combination of two existing methods: a deterministic approach with coherence-length domains and probabilistic domain-width annealing.…
We propose a cavity-QED scheme for the controlled generation of sequences of entangled single-photon wavepackets. A photon is created inside a cavity via an active medium, such as an atom, and decays into the continuum of radiation modes outside the cavity(coupled, for example to an optical fiber). Subsequent wavepackets generated in this way behave as independent logical qubits. This and the possibility of producing maximally entangled multi-qubit states suggest many applications in quantum communication.
We report the implementation of a high-rate source of single and two-photon states. By combining the advantages of short pulses and cavities, heralding rates up to 250kHz with 88% fidelity have been obtained for the single photons as well as 800Hz with 82% fidelity for the two-photon states. Furthermore, we developed a setup where the homodyne measurement is conditioned by the heralding of the quantum states, enabling the detection of most of the heralded events. This allows a faster characterization of the photon source leading to an increase in the fidelities up to 91% and 88% respectively f…
We propose an efficient scheme to engineer multi-atom entanglement by detecting cavity decay through single-photon detectors. In the special case of two atoms, this scheme is much more efficient than previous probabilistic schemes, and insensitive to randomness in the atom's position. More generally, the scheme can be used to prepare arbitrary superpositions of multi-atom Dicke states without the requirements of high-efficiency detection and separate addressing of different atoms.
Cat states of the microwave field stored in high-Q resonators show great promise for robust encoding and manipulation of quantum information. Here we propose an approach to efficiently prepare such cat states in a Kerr-nonlinear resonator by the use of a two-photon drive. We show that this preparation is robust against single-photon loss. We moreover find that it is possible to remove undesirable phase evolution induced by a Kerr nonlinearity using a two-photon drive of appropriate amplitude and phase. Finally, we present a universal set of quantum logical gates that can be performed on the en…
We discuss a novel method of efficiently producing multi-photon states using repeated spontaneous parametric downconversion. Specifically, by attempting downconversion several times, we can pseudo-deterministically add photons to a mode, producing various several-photon states. We discuss both expected performance and experimental limitations.
Multi-dimensional entangled states have been proven to be more powerful in some quantum information process. In this paper, down-converted photons from spontaneous parametric down conversion(SPDC) are used to engineer multi-dimensional entangled states. A kind of multi-degree multi-dimensional Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger(GHZ) state can also be generated. The hyper-entangled photons, which are entangled in energy-time, polarization and orbital angular momentum (OAM), is proved to be useful to increase the dimension of systems and investigate higher-dimensional entangled states.
When two equal photon-number states are combined on a balanced beam splitter, both output ports of the beam splitter contain only even numbers of photons. Consider the time-reversal of this interference phenomenon: the probability that a pair of photon-number-resolving detectors at the output ports of a beam splitter both detect the same number of photons depends on the overlap between the input state of the beam splitter and a state containing only even photon numbers. Here, we propose using this even-parity detection to engineer quantum states containing only even photon-number terms. As an …
We propose and analyze a new method to produce single and entangled photons which does not require cavities. It relies on the collective enhancement of light emission as a consequence of the presence of entanglement in atomic ensembles. Light emission is triggered by a laser pulse, and therefore our scheme is deterministic. Furthermore, it allows one to produce a variety of photonic entangled states by first preparing certain atomic states using simple sequences of quantum gates. We analyze the feasibility of our scheme, and particularize it to: ions in linear traps, atoms in optical lattices,…
We study the system that two atoms simultaneously interact with a single-mode thermal field via different couplings and different spontaneous emission rates when two-photon process is involved. It is found that we indeed can employ the different couplings to produce the atom-atom thermal entanglement in two-photon process. The different atomic spontaneous emission rates are also utilizable in generating thermal entanglement. We also investigate the effect of the cavity leakage. To the initial atomic state $|ee> ,$a slight leakage can relieve the restriction of interaction time and we can obtai…
We study distinguishing information in the context of quantum interference involving more than one parametric downconversion (PDC) source and in the context of polarization-entangled photon pairs based on PDC. We arrive at specific design criteria for two-photon sources so that when used as part of complex optical systems, such as photon-based quantum information processing schemes, distinguishing information between the photons is eliminated guaranteeing high visibility interference. We propose practical techniques which lead to suitably engineered two-photon states that can be realistically …
Cavity resonators are promising resources for quantum technology, while native nonlinear interactions for cavities are typically too weak to provide the level of quantum control required to deliver complex targeted operations. Here we investigate a scheme to engineer a target Hamiltonian for photonic cavities using ancilla qubits. By off-resonantly driving dispersively coupled ancilla qubits, we develop an optimized approach to engineering an arbitrary photon-number-dependent (PND) Hamiltonian for the cavities while minimizing the operation errors. The engineered Hamiltonian admits various app…
The future of integrated quantum photonics relies heavily on the ability to engineer refined methods for preparing the quantum states needed to implement various quantum protocols. An important example of such states are quantum-correlated photon pairs, which can be efficiently generated using spontaneous nonlinear processes in integrated microring-resonator structures. In this work, we propose a method for generating spectrally unentangled photon pairs from a standard microring resonator. The method utilizes interference between a primary and a delayed secondary pump pulse to effectively incr…
The U(1,1) and U(2) transformations realized by three-mode interaction in the respective parametric approximations are studied in conditional measurement, and the corresponding non-unitary transformation operators are derived. As an application, the preparation of single-mode quantum states using an optical feedback loop is discussed, with special emphasis of Fock state preparation. For that example, the influence of non-perfect detection and feedback is also considered.
Using the quantum interference of photon pairs in N-stage nonlinear interferometers (NLI), the contour of joint spectral function can be modified into islands pattern. We perform two series of experiments. One is that all the nonlinear fibers in pulse pumped NLI are identical; the other is that the lengths of N pieces nonlinear fibers are different. We not only demonstrate how the pattern of spectral function changes with the stage number N, but also characterize how the relative intensity of island peaks varies with N. The results, well agree with theoretical predictions in Ref. [1], reveal t…
We develop a technique for generating multi-photon nonclassical states via interference between coherent and Fock states using quantum catalysis. By modulating the coherent field strength, the number of catalyst photons and the ratio of the beam splitter upon which they interfere, a wide range of nonclassical phenomena can be created, including squeezing of up to 1.25 dB, anti- and super-bunched photon statistics and states exhibiting over 90% fidelity to displaced coherent superposition states. We perform quantum catalysis experimentally, showing tunability into the nonclassical regime. Our p…
Engineering and controlling well defined states of light for quantum information applications is of increasing importance as the complexity of quantum systems grows. For example, in quantum networks high multi-photon interference visibility requires properly devised single mode sources. In this paper we propose a spontaneous parametric down conversion source based on an integrated cavity-waveguide, where single narrow-band, possibly distinct, spectral modes for the idler and the signal fields can be generated. This mode selection takes advantage of the clustering effect, due to the intrinsic d…
Non-Hermitian spectral degeneracies, known as exceptional points (EPs), feature simultaneous coalescence of both eigenvalues and the associated eigenstates of a system. A host of intriguing EP effects and their applications have been revealed in the classical realm, such as loss-induced lasing, single-mode laser, and EP-enhanced sensing. Here we show that a purely quantum effect, known as single-photon blockade, emerges in a Kerr microring resonator due to EP-induced asymmetric coupling between the optical modes and the nonlinearity-induced anharmonic energy-level spacing. A striking feature o…
An arbitrary initial state of an optical or microwave field in a lossy driven nonlinear cavity can be changed, in the steady-state limit, into a partially incoherent superposition of only the vacuum and the single-photon states. This effect is known as single-photon blockade, which is usually analyzed for a Kerr-type nonlinear cavity parametrically driven by a single-photon process assuming single-photon loss mechanisms. We study photon blockade engineering via a squeezed reservoir, i.e., a quantum reservoir, where only two-photon absorption is allowed. Namely, we analyze a lossy nonlinear cav…
It has been shown that there are not only transverse but also longitudinal couplings between microwave fields and a superconducting qubit with broken inversion symmetry of the potential energy. Using multiphoton processes induced by longitudinal coupling fields and frequency matching conditions, we design a universal algorithm to produce arbitrary superpositions of two-mode photon states of microwave fields in two separated transmission line resonators, which are coupled to a superconducting qubit. Based on our algorithm, we analyze the generation of evenly-populated states and NOON states. Co…
We calculate that an appropriate modification of the field associated with only one of the photons of a photon pair can suppress generation of the pair entirely. From this general result, we develop a method for suppressing the generation of undesired photon pairs utilizing photonic stop bands. For a third-order nonlinear optical source of frequency-degenerate photons we calculate the modified frequency spectrum (joint spectral intensity) and show a significant increase in a standard metric, the coincidence to accidental ratio. These results open a new avenue for photon-pair frequency correlat…
We have constructed an efficient source of photon pairs using a waveguide-type nonlinear device and performed a two-photon interference experiment with an unbalanced Michelson interferometer. Parametric down-converted photons from the nonlinear device are detected by two detectors located at the output ports of the interferometer. Because the interferometer is constructed with two optical paths of different length, photons from the shorter path arrive at the detector earlier than those from the longer path. We find that the difference of arrival time and the time window of the coincidence coun…
We show how to generate quadratic and bi-quadratic phonon-photon interactions through a driven three-level ion inside a cavity. With such a system it is possible to squeeze the cavity-field state, the ion motional state or even the entangled phonon-photon state. We present a detailed analysis of the cavity-field squeezing process, distinguishing three different regimes of this amplification mechanism: the subcritical, critical, and supercritical regimes, which depend, apart from the coupling parameters, on the excitation of the vibrational state. As an application of the engineered Hamiltonian…
We propose a general experimental quantum state engineering scheme for the high-fidelity conditional generation of a large variety of nonclassical states of traveling optical fields. It contains a single measurement, thereby achieving a high success probability. The generated state is encoded in the optimal choice of the physically controllable parameters of the arrangement. These parameter values are determined via numerical optimization.
A Rabi dimer is used to model a recently reported circuit quantum electrodynamics system composed of two coupled transmission-line resonators with each coupled to one qubit. In this study, a phonon bath is adopted to mimic the multimode micromechanical resonators and is coupled to the qubits in the Rabi dimer. The dynamical behavior of the composite system is studied by the Dirac-Frenkel time-dependent variational principle combined with the multiple Davydov D$_{2}$ ansätze. Initially all the photons are pumped into the left resonator, and the two qubits are in the down state coupled with the …
We demonstrate theoretically and experimentally a high level of control of the four-wave mixing process in an inert gas filled inhibited-coupling guiding hollow-core photonic crystal fiber in order to generate photon pairs. The specific multiple-branch dispersion profile in such fibers allows both entangled and separable bi-photon states to be produced. By controlling the choice of gas, its pressure and the fiber length, we experimentally generate various joint spectral intensity profiles in a stimulated regime that is transferable to the spontaneous regime. The generated profiles cover both s…
We propose and analyze a multi-functional setup consisting of high finesse optical cavities, beam splitters, and phase shifters. The basic scheme projects arbitrary photonic two-mode input states onto the subspace spanned by the product of Fock states |n>|n> with n=0,1,2,.... This protocol does not only provide the possibility to conditionally generate highly entangled photon number states as resource for quantum information protocols but also allows one to test and hence purify this type of quantum states in a communication scenario, which is of great practical importance. The scheme is espec…
We propose a scheme to engineer Schrödinger-cat states of propagating optical pulses. Multi-dimensional and multi-partite cat states can be generated simply by reflecting coherent optical pulses successively from a single-atom cavity. The influences of various sources of noise, including the atomic spontaneous emission and the pulse shape distortion, are characterized through detailed numerical simulation, which demonstrates practicality of this scheme within the reach of current experimental technology.
We put forward a dissipative preparation scheme for strongly correlated photon states. Our approach is based on a two-photon loss mechanism that is realised via a single four-level atom inside a bimodal optical cavity. Each elementary two-photon emission event removes one photon out of each of the two modes. The dark states of this loss mechanism are given by NOON states and arbitrary superpositions thereof. We find that the steady state of the two cavity modes exhibits entanglement and for certain parameters, a mixture of two coherent entangled states is produced. We discuss how the quantum c…
We study the back-action of a single photon detector on the electromagnetic field upon a photodetection by considering a microscopic model in which the detector is constituted of a sensor and an amplification mechanism. Using the quantum trajectories approach we determine the Quantum Jump Superoperator (QJS) that describes the action of the detector on the field state immediately after the photocount. The resulting QJS consists of two parts: the bright counts term, representing the real photoabsorptions, and the dark counts term, representing the amplification of intrinsic excitations inside t…
Photonic entanglement is a crucial resource for quantum information technologies, including quantum information processing and long-distance communication. These applications call for narrow-band entanglement sources, being compatible with the photon-electron interfaces and relax the dispersion-induced entanglement-degradation in the network mediums. However, such Giga-hertz-level bandwidth is a challenge for the photonic entanglement based on conventional spontaneous parametric down-conversion. Here we introduce a state-of-art domain-engineering technology for the counterpropagating phase mat…
State preparation via conditional output measurement on a beam splitter is studied, assuming the signal mode is mixed with a mode prepared in a Fock state and photon numbers are measured in one of the output channels. It is shown that the mode in the other output channel is prepared in either a photon-subtracted or a photon-added Jacobi polynomial state, depending upon the difference between the number of photons in the input Fock state and the number of photons in the output Fock state onto which it is projected. The properties of the conditional output states are studied for coherent and squ…
Scaling up linear-optics quantum computing will require multi-photon gates which are compact, phase-stable, exhibit excellent quantum interference, and have success heralded by the detection of ancillary photons. We investigate implementation of the optimal known gate design which meets these requirements: the Knill controlled-Z gate, implemented in integrated laser-written waveguide arrays. We show that device performance is more sensitive to the small deviations in the coupler reflectivity, arising due to the tolerance values of the fabrication method, than phase variations in the circuit. T…
In one-dimensional optical setups, light-matter interaction is drastically enhanced by the interference between the incident and scattered fields. Particularly, in the impedance-matched Λ-type three-level systems, a single photon deterministically induces the Raman transition and switches the electronic state of the system. Here we show that such a Λsystem can be implemented by using dressed states of a driven superconducting qubit and a resonator. The input microwave photons are perfectly absorbed and are down-converted into other frequency modes in the same waveguide. The proposed setup is a…
We present an algorithm of quantum engineering of large-amplitude>5 high-fidelity>0.99 even/odd Schrodinger cat states (SCSs) using a single mode squeezed vacuum (SMSV) state as resource. Set of k beam splitters (BSs) with arbitrary transmittance and reflectance coefficients sequentially following each other acts as a hub that redirects a multiphoton state into the measuring modes simultaneously measured by photon number resolving (PNR) detectors. We show that the multiphoton state splitting guarantees significant increase of the success probability of the cat state generator compared to its i…
An entanglement-preserving photo-detector converts photon polarization to electron spin. Up and down spin must respond equally to oppositely polarized photons, creating a requirement for degenerate spin energies, ge=0 for electrons. We present a plot of ge-factor versus lattice constant, analogous to bandgap versus lattice constant, that can be used for g-factor engineering of III-V alloys and quantum wells
Quantum states can be stabilized in the presence of intrinsic and environmental losses by either applying active feedback conditioned on an ancillary system or through reservoir engineering. Reservoir engineering maintains a desired quantum state through a combination of drives and designed entropy evacuation. We propose and implement a quantum reservoir engineering protocol that stabilizes Fock states in a microwave cavity. This protocol is realized with a circuit quantum electrodynamics platform where a Josephson junction provides direct, nonlinear coupling between two superconducting wavegu…
Continuous-variable quantum information processing through quantum optics offers a promising platform for building the next generation of scalable fault-tolerant information processors. To achieve quantum computational advantages and fault tolerance, non-Gaussian resources are essential. In this work, we propose and analyze a method to generate a variety of non-Gaussian states using coherent photon subtraction from a two-mode squeezed state followed by photon-number-resolving measurements. The proposed method offers a promising way to generate rotation-symmetric states conventionally used for …
A two qubit quantum gate, namely the C-Phase, has been realized by exploiting the longitudinal momentum (i.e. the optical path) degree of freedom of a single photon. The experimental setup used to engineer this quantum gate represents an advanced version of the high stability closed-loop interferometric setup adopted to generate and characterize 2-photon 4-qubit Phased Dicke states. Some experimental results, dealing with the characterization of multipartite entanglement of the Phased Dicke states are also discussed in detail.
We propose a robust scheme to generate single-photon Fock states and atom-photon and atom-atom entanglement in atom-cavity systems. We also present a scheme for quantum networking between two cavity nodes using an atomic channel. The mechanism is based on Stark-chirped rapid adiabatic passage (SCRAP) and half-SCRAP processes in a microwave cavity. The engineering of these states depends on the design of the adiabatic dynamics through the static and dynamic Stark shifts.
We experimentally study the generation of photon pairs via spontaneous four-wave mixing with two distinct laser pulses. We find that the dual-pump technique enables new capabilities: 1) a new characterization methodology to measure noise contributions, source brightness and photon collection efficiencies directly from raw photon-count measurements; 2) an enhanced ability to generate heralded single photons in a pure quantum state; and 3) the ability to derive upper and lower bounds on heralded-photon quantum state purity from measurements of photon-number statistics even in the presence of noi…
We present a two-dimensional (2D) photonic crystal system for interacting with cold cesium (Cs) atoms. The band structures of the 2D photonic crystals are predicted to produce unconventional atom-light interaction behaviors, including anisotropic emission, suppressed spontaneous decay and photon mediated atom-atom interactions controlled by the position of the atomic array relative to the photonic crystal. An optical conveyor technique is presented for continuously loading atoms into the desired trapping positions with optimal coupling to the photonic crystal. The device configuration also ena…
