The celebrated Hong--Ou--Mandel effect illustrates the richness of two-photon interferometry. In this work, we demonstrate that this extends to the realm of time-frequency interferometry. Taking advantage of the mathematical analogy which can be drawn between the frequency and quadrature degrees of freedom of light when there is a single photon in each auxiliary mode, we consider the equivalent of the Hong--Ou--Mandel effect in the frequency domain. In this setting, the $n$-Fock state becomes equivalent to a single-photon state with a spectral wave function given by the $n^{th}$ Hermite--Gauss function and destructive interference corresponds to vanishing probability of detecting single photons with an order one Hermite--Gauss spectral profile. This compelling analogy motivates us to propose an interferometric strategy that uses a frequency-engineered two-photon state to achieve enhanced phase precision that scales inversely with the number of modes. Finally, we generalise the Gaussian Boson Sampling model to time-frequency degrees of freedom of single photons.
All-optical photonic devices are crucial for many important photonic technology and applications, ranging from optical communication to quantum information processing. Conventional design of all-optical devices is based on photon propagation and interference in real space, which may reply on large numbers of optical elements and are challenging for precise control. Here we propose a new route for engineering all-optical devices using photon internal degrees of freedom, which form photonic crystals in such synthetic dimensions for photon propagation and interference. We demonstrate this new des…
Quantum technologies, such as quantum communication, sensing and imaging, need a platform which is flexible, miniaturizable and works at room temperature. Integrated photonics is a promising and fast-developing platform. This requires to develop the right tools to design and fabricate arbitrary photonic quantum devices. Here we present an algorithm which, starting from a $n$-mode transformation $U$, designs a photonic device implementing $U$. Using this method we design integrated photonic devices which implement quantum gates with high fidelity. Apart from quantum computation, future applicat…
Photonic quantum computing is one of the leading approaches to universal quantum computation. However, large-scale implementation of photonic quantum computing has been hindered by its intrinsic difficulties, such as probabilistic entangling gates for photonic qubits and lack of scalable ways to build photonic circuits. Here we discuss how to overcome these limitations by taking advantage of two key ideas which have recently emerged. One is a hybrid qubit-continuous variable approach for realizing a deterministic universal gate set for photonic qubits. The other is time-domain multiplexing tec…
Characterising the input-output photon-number distribution of an unknown optical quantum channel is an important task for many applications in quantum information processing. Ideally, this would require deterministic photon-number sources and photon-number-resolving detectors, but these technologies are still work-in-progress. In this work, we propose a general method to rigorously bound the input-output photon number distribution of an unknown optical channel using standard optical devices such as coherent light sources and non-photon-number-resolving detectors/homodyne detectors. To demonstr…
We report the experimental resource-efficient implementation of the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) using four-dimensional photonic quantum states of single-photons. The four-dimensional quantum states are implemented by utilizing polarization and path degrees of freedom of a single-photon. Our photonic VQE is equipped with the quantum error mitigation (QEM) protocol that efficiently reduces the effects of Pauli noise in the quantum processing unit. We apply our photonic VQE to estimate the ground state energy of He--H$^{+}$ cation. The simulation and experimental results demonstrate tha…
We study the possibility of using single rare-earth ions coupled to a photonic cavity with high cooperativity for performing non-destructive measurements of photons, which would be useful for global quantum networks and photonic quantum computing. We calculate the achievable fidelity as a function of the parameters of the rare-earth ion and photonic cavity, which include the ion's optical and spin dephasing rates, the cavity linewidth, the single photon coupling to the cavity, and the detection efficiency. We suggest a promising experimental realization using current state of the art technolog…
Making analogy with atomic physics is a powerful tool for photonic technology, witnessed by the recent development in topological photonics and non-Hermitian photonics based on parity-time symmetry. Mollow triplet is a prominent atomic effect with both fundamental and technological importance. Here we demonstrate the analogue of Mollow triplet with quantum photonic systems. Photonic entanglement is generated with spontaneous nonlinear processes in dressed photonic modes, which are introduced through coherent multimode coupling. We further demonstrate the flexibility of the photonic system to r…
The recent progress in integrated quantum optics has set the stage for the development of an integrated platform for quantum information processing with photons, with potential applications in quantum simulation. Among the different material platforms being investigated, direct-bandgap semiconductors and particularly gallium arsenide (GaAs) offer the widest range of functionalities, including single- and entangled-photon generation by radiative recombination, low-loss routing, electro-optic modulation and single-photon detection. This paper reviews the recent progress in the development of the…
Scalable quantum photonic systems require efficient single photon sources coupled to integrated photonic devices. Solid-state quantum emitters can generate single photons with high efficiency, while silicon photonic circuits can manipulate them in an integrated device structure. Combining these two material platforms could, therefore, significantly increase the complexity of integrated quantum photonic devices. Here, we demonstrate hybrid integration of solid-state quantum emitters to a silicon photonic device. We develop a pick-and-place technique that can position epitaxially grown InAs/InP …
Photonic hyper-crystals combine the most interesting features of hyperbolic metamaterials and photonic crystals. Since the dispersion law of extraordinary photons in hyperbolic metamaterials does not exhibit the usual diffraction limit, photonic hyper-crystals exhibit light localization on deep subwavelength scales, leading to considerable enhancement of nonlinear photon-photon interaction. Therefore, similar to their conventional photonic crystal counterparts, nonlinear photonic hyper-crystals appear to be very promising in optical limiting and optical computing applications. Nonlinear optics…
The recent advent of photonic topological insulators has opened the door to using the robustness of topologically protected transport (originated in the domain of condensed matter physics) in optical devices and in quantum simulation. Concurrently, quantum walks in photonic networks have been shown to yield exponential speedup for certain algorithms, such as Boson sampling. Here we theoretically demonstrate that photonic topological insulators can robustly protect the transport of quantum information through photonic networks, despite the presence of disorder.
The scaling up of quantum hardware is the fundamental challenge ahead in order to realize the disruptive potential of quantum technology in information science. Among the plethora of hardware platforms, photonics stands out by offering a modular approach, where the main challenge is to construct sufficiently high-quality building blocks and develop methods to efficiently interface them. Importantly, the subsequent scaling-up will make full use of the mature integrated photonic technology provided by photonic foundry infrastructure to produce small foot-print quantum processors of immense compl…
A coherent coupling among different energy photons provided by nonlinear optical interaction is regarded as a photonic version of the Rabi oscillation. Cavity enhancement of the nonlinearity reduces energy requirement significantly and pushes the scalability of the frequency-encoded photonic circuit based on the photonic Rabi oscillation. However, confinement of the photons in the cavity severely limits the number of interactable frequency modes. Here we demonstrate a wide-bandwidth and efficient photonic Rabi oscillation achieving full-cycle oscillation based on a cavity-enhanced nonlinear op…
We study the photon statistics of symmetric and antisymmetric modes in a photonic molecule consisting of two linearly coupled nonlinear cavity modes. Our calculations show that strong photon antibunching of both symmetric and antisymmetric modes can be obtained even when the nonlinearity in the photonic molecule is weak. The strong antibunching effect results from the destructive interference between different paths for two-photon excitation. Moreover, we find that the optimal frequency detunings for strong photon antibunching in the symmetric and antisymmetric modes are linearly dependent on …
At photonic Dirac points, electromagnetic waves are governed by the same equations as two-component massless relativistic fermions. However, photonic Dirac points are known to occur in pairs in "photonic graphene" and other similar photonic crystals, which necessitates special precautions to excite only states near one of the Dirac points. Systems hosting unpaired photonic Dirac points are significantly harder to realize, as they require broken time-reversal symmetry. Here, we report on the first observation of an unpaired Dirac point in a planar two-dimensional photonic crystal. The structure…
The topological charge of a photonic vortex is an essential quantity in singular optics and the critical parameter to characterize the vorticity of twisted light. However, the definition of the photonic topological charge remains elusive. Here we put forth a theoretical formalism to provide a comprehensive treatment of photonic vortices. We introduce quantum operators for the photon current density and helicity current density based on the continuity equations from the paraxial Helmholtz equation. Our formalism allows us to introduce flow velocity and circulation for photonic currents in paral…
Unidirectional photonic edge states arise at the interface between two topologically-distinct photonic crystals. Here, we demonstrate a micron-scale GaAs photonic ring resonator, created using a spin Hall-type topological photonic crystal waveguide. Embedded InGaAs quantum dots are used to probe the mode structure of the device. We map the spatial profile of the resonator modes, and demonstrate control of the mode confinement through tuning of the photonic crystal lattice parameters. The intrinsic chirality of the edge states makes them of interest for applications in integrated quantum photon…
The integration of quantum emitters with integrated photonics enables complex quantum photonic circuits that are necessary for photonic implementation of quantum simulators, computers, and networks. Thin-film lithium niobate is an ideal material substrate for quantum photonics because it can tightly confine light in small waveguides and has a strong electro-optic effect that can switch and modulate single photons at low power and high speed. However, lithium niobite lacks efficient single-photon emitters, which are essential for scalable quantum photonic circuits. We demonstrate deterministic …
