Quantum walks are counterparts of classical random walks. They spread faster, which can be exploited in information processing tasks, and constitute a versatile simulation platform for many quantum systems. Yet, some of their properties can be emulated with classical light. This rises a question: which aspects of the model are truly nonclassical? We address it by carrying out a photonic experiment based on a pre- and post-selection paradox. The paradox implies that if somebody could choose to ask, either if the particle is at position x = 0 at even time steps, or at position x = d (d > 1) at odd time steps, the answer would be positive, no matter the question asked. Therefore, the particle seems to undergo long distance oscillations despite the fact that the model allows to jump one position at a time. We translate this paradox into a Bell-like inequality and experimentally confirm its violation up to eight standard deviations.
We study the transport and quantum walk of nonclassical light in an array of coupled waveguides which have novel properties like very low decoherence and thus making them ideal for storage of quantum information. We show how squeezing gets turned over from one waveguide to another. We further show how input nonclassical light can generate entanglement among different waveguides. Our results involve both first quantization due to array structure and second quantization due to the quantum nature of fields and can also be used to discuss the Talbot effect in the quantum regime.
The presence of disorder and inhomogeneities in quantum networks has often been unexpectedly beneficial for both quantum and classical resources. Here, we experimentally realize a controllable inhomogenous Quantum Walk dynamics, which can be exploited to investigate the effect of coherent disorder on the quantum correlations between two indistinguishable photons. Through the imposition of suitable disorder configurations, we observe two photon states which exhibit an enhancement in the quantum correlations between two modes of the network, compared to the case of an ordered Quantum Walk. Diffe…
The question of witnessing or quantifying nonclassicality of quantum systems has been addressed in various ways. For a given system or theory, we propose identifying it with the incompatibility of admissible states. We quantify the nonclassicality of quantum systems using the Hilbert-Schmidt norm of the commutator of two states. As a particular application of this measure, we study the classicalization of a discrete-time quantum walk with a noisy coin.
Reshaping nonclassical properties and metrological performance of entangled coherent states via post-selected von Neumann measurements
State Key Laboratory of Semiconductor Physics and Chip Technologies, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院半导体研究所）；Center of Materials Science and Opto-Electronic Technology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学材料科学与光电技术研究中心）；Wolfram Research South America（Wolfram Research 南美分部）；School of Physics, Liaoning University（辽宁大学物理学院）
That quantum correlations can be generated over time between the spin and the position of a quantum walker is indisputable. The creation of bipartite entanglement has also been reported for two-walker systems. In this scenario, however, since the global state lies in a fourpartite Hilbert space, the question arises as to whether genuine multipartite entanglement may develop in time. Also, since the spatial degrees of freedom can be viewed as a noisy channel for the two-spin part, one may wonder how other nonclassical aspects, such as Bell nonlocality, Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen steering, quantum …
We propose a new measure of the nonclassical distance in the case of Gaussian states. Let us consider two Gaussian states one of which is fixed and the other runs through the set of Gaussian classical states. The maximum value of the fidelity between these two states can be used as a nonclassical distance of the fixed state to the set of classical states, in the same extent as the Hillery measure. This measure increases when on the fixed state acts a Gaussian noise map i.e. the selected state becomes closer to the classical states.
In quantum optics, nonclassical properties of various quantum states of radiation field are frequently studied. Some of those states are finite dimensional and referred to as qudits. These states are important because of their potential applications in quantum information processing. Further, nonclassical states are those which do not have any classical counterpart. Consequently, to establish quantum supremacy, we always require nonclassical state. Recently, Sivakumar and Meher have studied the nonclassical properties of the number state filtered coherent state, and shown that the number state…
The quantum random walk has been much studied recently, largely due to its highly nonclassical behavior. In this paper, we study one possible route to classical behavior for the discrete quantum walk on the line: the presence of decoherence in the quantum ``coin'' which drives the walk. We find exact analytical expressions for the time dependence of the first two moments of position, and show that in the long-time limit the variance grows linearly with time, unlike the unitary walk. We compare this to the results of direct numerical simulation, and see how the form of the position distribution…
One of the most striking quantum phenomena is photon bunching resulting from coincidently impinging two-indistinguishable photons on a beam splitter (BS) from two different input ports. Such a nonclassical feature has also been observed even between two independent light sources through either coherence optics resulting in phase locking or post-selected measurements such as quantum beating-based gating. Recently, BS physics regarding quantum features has been discussed using pure coherence optics based on phase basis superposition of the BS. Here, we experimentally demonstrate coherent photon …
Quantum random walks have been much studied recently, largely due to their highly nonclassical behavior. In this paper, we study one possible route to classical behavior for the discrete quantum random walk on the line: the use of multiple quantum ``coins'' in order to diminish the effects of interference between paths. We find solutions to this system in terms of the single coin random walk, and compare the asymptotic limit of these solutions to numerical simulations. We find exact analytical expressions for the time-dependence of the first two moments, and show that in the long time limit th…
Complementarity theory is the essence of the Copenhagen interpretation. Since the Hanbury Brown and Twiss experiments, the particle nature of photons has been intensively studied for various quantum phenomena such as anticorrelation and Bell inequality violation in terms of two-photon correlation. Regarding the fundamental question on these quantum features, however, no clear answer exists for how to generate such an entanglement photon pair and what causes the maximum correlation between them. Here, we experimentally demonstrate the physics of anticorrelation on a beam splitter using sub-Pois…
Quantum walks in atomic systems, owing to their continuous nature, are especially well-suited for the simulation of many-body physics and can potentially offer an exponential speedup in solving certain black box problems. Photonics offers an alternate route to simulating such nonclassical behavior in a more robust platform. However, in photonic implementations to date, an increase to the depth of a continuous quantum walk requires modifying the footprint of the system. Here we report continuous walks of a two-photon quantum frequency comb with entanglement across multiple dimensions. The coupl…
Collective measurements on identically prepared quantum systems can extract more information than local measurements, thereby enhancing information-processing efficiency. Although this nonclassical phenomenon has been known for two decades, it has remained a challenging task to demonstrate the advantage of collective measurements in experiments. Here we introduce a general recipe for performing deterministic collective measurements on two identically prepared qubits based on quantum walks. Using photonic quantum walks, we realize experimentally an optimized collective measurement with fidelity…
We present a method to map the evolution of photonic random walks that is compatible with nonclassical input light. Our approach leverages a newly developed flexible waveguide platform to tune the jumping rate between spatial modes, allowing the observation of a range of evolution times in a chip of fixed length. In a proof-of-principle demonstration we reconstruct the evolution of photons through a uniform array of coupled waveguides by monitoring the end-face alone. This approach enables direct observation of mode occupancy at arbitrary resolution, extending the utility of photonic random wa…
Uncertainty relations express limits on the extent to which the outcomes of distinct measurements on a single state can be made jointly predictable. The existence of nontrivial uncertainty relations in quantum theory is generally considered to be a way in which it entails a departure from the classical worldview. However, this perspective is undermined by the fact that there exist operational theories which exhibit nontrivial uncertainty relations but which are consistent with the classical worldview insofar as they admit of a generalized-noncontextual ontological model. This prompts the quest…
We study the far field spatial distribution of the quantum fluctuations in the transverse profile of the output light beam generated by a type II Optical Parametric Oscillator below threshold, including the effects of transverse walk-off. We study how quadrature field correlations depend on the polarization. We find spatial EPR entanglement in quadrature-polarization components: For the far field points not affected by walk-off there is almost complete noise suppression in the proper quadratures difference of any orthogonal polarization components. We show the entanglement of the state of symm…
Harnessing Post-selected von Neumann Measurements to Strengthen Entanglement and Quantum Signatures in Coherent States
Research and Development Center for Wide Bandgap Semiconductors（宽禁带半导体研发中心）；State Key Laboratory of Semiconductor Physics and Chip Technologies, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院半导体研究所半导体物理与芯片技术国家重点实验室）；Center of Materials Science and Opto-Electronic Technology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学材料科学与光电/激光技术中心）
Coherence as a resource for $N$-box and quantum pigeonhole paradoxes
INL – International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory（国际伊比利亚纳米技术实验室）；Institute of Theoretical Physics, Ulm University（乌尔姆大学理论物理研究所）；Center for Integrated Quantum Science and Technology (IQST)（集成量子科学与技术中心）；Instituto de Física, Universidade Federal Fluminense（弗鲁米嫩塞联邦大学物理研究所）
We show the utility of the weak value amplification to observe the quantum interference between two close lying atomic coherent states in a post-selected atomic cat state, produced in a system of $N$ identical two-level atoms weakly interacting with a single photon field. Through the observation of the negative parts of the Wigner distribution of the post-selected atomic cat state, we find that the post-selected atomic cat state becomes more nonclassical when the post-selected polarization state of the single photon field tends toward becoming orthogonal to its pre-selected state. We show that…
In this paper, we analyze the potential for new types of searches using the formalism of scattering random walks on Quantum Computers. Given a particular type of graph consisting of nodes and connections, a "Tree Maze", we would like to find a selected final node as quickly as possible, faster than any classical search algorithm. We show that this can be done using a quantum random walk, both exactly through numerical calculations as well as analytically using eigenvectors and eigenvalues of the quantum system.
We study maximal coin-position entanglement generation via a discrete-time quantum walk, in which the coin operation is randomly selected from one of two coin operators set at each step. We solve maximal entanglement generation as an optimization problem with quantum process fidelity as the cost function. Then we determine the maximal entanglement that can be rigorously generated for any step beyond the second regardless of initial condition with appropriate coin sequences. The simplest coin sequence comprising Hadamard and identity operations is equivalent to the generalized elephant quantum …
Quantum state engineering, namely the generation and control of arbitrary quantum states, is drawing more and more attention due to its wide applications in quantum information and computation. However, there is no general method in theory, and the existing schemes also depend heavily on the selected experimental platform. In this manuscript, we give two schemes for the engineering task of arbitrary quantum state in $c$-partite $d$-dimensional system, both of which are based on discrete-time quantum walk with a $2^c$-dimensional time- and position-dependent coin. The first procedure is a $d$-s…
Scalable Quantum Walk-Based Heuristics for the Minimum Vertex Cover Problem
Instituto de Física Gleb Wataghin, Universidade Estadual de Campinas（坎皮纳斯州立大学格莱布·瓦塔金物理研究所）；Venturus Innovation Center（Venturus创新中心）；QuaTI - Quantum Technology & Information（量子技术与信息研究中心）
This paper gives an brief review of the basic physics of quantum optomechanics and provides an overview of some of its recent developments and current areas of focus. It first outlines the basic theory of cavity optomechanical cooling and gives a brief status report of the experimental state-of-the-art. It then turns to the deep quantum regime of operation of optomechanical oscillators and cover selected aspects of quantum state preparation, control and characterization, including mechanical squeezing and pulsed optomechanics. This is followed by a discussion of the "bottom-up" approach that e…
In probabilistic quantum metrology, one aims at finding weak measurements that concentrate the Fisher Information on the resulting quantum states, post-selected according to the weak outcomes. Though the Quantum Cramér-Rao bound itself cannot be overshot this way, it could be possible to improve the information-cost ratio, or even the total Fisher Information. We propose a post-selection protocol achieving this goal based on single-photon subtraction onto a thermal state of radiation yielding a greater information-cost ratio for the temperature parameter with respect to the standard strategy r…
Optical signals obtained by the material response to classical laser fields are given by nonlinear response functions which can be expressed by sums over various quantum pathways of matter. We show that some pathways can be selected by using nonclassical fields, through the entanglement of photon and material pathways, which results in a different-power law dependence on the incoming field intensity. Spectrally overlapping stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) and two-photon-absorption (TPA) pathways in a pump probe experiment are separated by controlling the degree of entanglement of pairs of inc…
