Multiphoton Entangled States Research Articles

Deterministic Generation of Qudit Photonic Graph States from Quantum Emitters

We propose and analyze deterministic protocols to generate qudit photonic graph states from quantum emitters. We show that our approach can be applied to generate any qudit graph state and we exemplify it by constructing protocols to generate one- and two-dimensional qudit cluster states, absolutely maximally entangled states, and logical states of quantum error-correcting codes. Some of these protocols make use of time-delayed feedback, while others do not. The only additional resource requirement compared to the qubit case is the ability to control multilevel emitters. These results significantly broaden the range of multiphoton entangled states that can be produced deterministically from quantum emitters. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Efficient characterizations of multiphoton states with an ultra-thin optical device

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.

Photonic Source of Heralded Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger States.

Generating large multiphoton entangled states is of main interest due to enabling universal photonic quantum computing and all-optical quantum repeater nodes. These applications exploit measurement-based quantum computation using cluster states. Remarkably, it was shown that photonic cluster states of arbitrary size can be generated by using feasible heralded linear optics fusion gates that act on heralded three-photon Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states as the initial resource state. Thus, the capability of generating heralded GHZ states is of great importance for scaling up photonic quantum computing. Here, we experimentally demonstrate this required building block by reporting a polarisation-encoded heralded GHZ state of three photons, for which we build a high-rate six-photon source (547±2 Hz) from a solid-state quantum emitter and a stable polarization-based interferometer. The detection of three ancillary photons heralds the generation of three-photon GHZ states among the remaining particles with fidelities up to F=0.7278±0.0106. Our results initiate a path for scalable entangling operations using heralded linear-optics implementations.

Quantum metrology in a lossless Mach–Zehnder interferometer using entangled photon inputs for a sequence of non-adaptive and adaptive measurements

Using multi-photon entangled input states, we estimate the phase uncertainty in a noiseless Mach–Zehnder interferometer using photon-counting detection. We assume a flat prior uncertainty and use Bayesian inference to construct a posterior uncertainty. By minimizing the posterior variance to get the optimal input states, we first devise an estimation and measurement strategy that yields the lowest phase uncertainty for a single measurement. N00N and Gaussian states are determined to be optimal in certain regimes. We then generalize to a sequence of repeated measurements, using non-adaptive and fully adaptive measurements. N00N and Gaussian input states are close to optimal in these cases as well, and optimal analytical formulae are developed. Using these formulae as inputs, a general scaling formula is obtained, which shows how many shots it would take on average to reduce phase uncertainty to a target level. Finally, these theoretical results are compared with a Monte Carlo simulation using frequentist inference. In both methods of inference, the local non-adaptive method is shown to be the most effective practical method to reduce phase uncertainty.

Unconditional and Robust Quantum Metrological Advantage beyond N00N States.

Quantum metrology employs quantum resources to enhance the measurement sensitivity beyond that can be achieved classically. While multiphoton entangled N00N states can in principle beat the shot-noise limit and reach the Heisenberg limit, high N00N states are difficult to prepare and fragile to photon loss which hinders them from reaching unconditional quantum metrological advantages. Here, we combine the idea of unconventional nonlinear interferometers and stimulated emission of squeezed light, previously developed for the photonic quantum computer Jiuzhang, to propose and realize a new scheme that achieves a scalable, unconditional, and robust quantum metrological advantage. We observe a 5.8(1)-fold enhancement above the shot-noise limit in the Fisher information extracted per photon, without discounting for photon loss and imperfections, which outperforms ideal 5-N00N states. The Heisenberg-limited scaling, the robustness to external photon loss, and the ease-of-use of our method make it applicable in practical quantum metrology at a low photon flux regime.

Generalized isometric tensor based quantum key distribution protocols of squeezed multiphoton entangled states

Isometric tensor offers a novel and powerful tool that can compress an entangled state into its tensor network state (TNS). The resulting quantum compression provides a new opportunity for enhancing quantum key distribution (QKD) protocols. The main idea explored in this work is to use the quantum compression to improve the efficiency of QKD. In a nut-shell, a collection of any multi-photon entangled states that carry encoded classical bits is compressed into a single-photon state before the corresponding photon is sent to the receiver that measures the qubit and decompresses it. In this paper, we first show how to obtain the generalized isometric tensors for compressing any entangled states and their inverse isometric tensors for decompression. In our proposed QKD protocol, the input state consists of any multi-photon entangled states, which are first compressed into a single-photon state <inline-formula><tex-math id="M7">\begin{document}$ \left| 0 \right\rangle $\end{document}</tex-math><alternatives><graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="17-20230589_M7.jpg"/><graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="17-20230589_M7.png"/></alternatives></inline-formula> or <inline-formula><tex-math id="M8">\begin{document}$ \left| 1 \right\rangle $\end{document}</tex-math><alternatives><graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="17-20230589_M8.jpg"/><graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="17-20230589_M8.png"/></alternatives></inline-formula> or Bell states by the sender Alice. A sequence of single-photon states <inline-formula><tex-math id="M9">\begin{document}$ \left| 0 \right\rangle $\end{document}</tex-math><alternatives><graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="17-20230589_M9.jpg"/><graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="17-20230589_M9.png"/></alternatives></inline-formula> and <inline-formula><tex-math id="M10">\begin{document}$ \left| 1 \right\rangle $\end{document}</tex-math><alternatives><graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="17-20230589_M10.jpg"/><graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="17-20230589_M10.png"/></alternatives></inline-formula> and one photon from the Bell state mixed with decoy qubits is sent to the receiver Bob via a quantum channel. Bob obtains the final sifted compressed states <inline-formula><tex-math id="M11">\begin{document}$ \left| 0 \right\rangle $\end{document}</tex-math><alternatives><graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="17-20230589_M11.jpg"/><graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="17-20230589_M11.png"/></alternatives></inline-formula> and <inline-formula><tex-math id="M12">\begin{document}$ \left| 1 \right\rangle $\end{document}</tex-math><alternatives><graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="17-20230589_M12.jpg"/><graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="17-20230589_M12.png"/></alternatives></inline-formula> and conjugate transpose of the isometric tensors. Using our protocols, Bob can decompress the received states <inline-formula><tex-math id="M13">\begin{document}$ \left| 0 \right\rangle $\end{document}</tex-math><alternatives><graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="17-20230589_M13.jpg"/><graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="17-20230589_M13.png"/></alternatives></inline-formula> and <inline-formula><tex-math id="M14">\begin{document}$ \left| 1 \right\rangle $\end{document}</tex-math><alternatives><graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="17-20230589_M14.jpg"/><graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="17-20230589_M14.png"/></alternatives></inline-formula> into original entangled states. Since quantum processors that are used to send quantum information between nodes are relatively primitive and low in power and the preparation of many-photon entanglement is relatively difficult at present, finding suitable protocols for the compression of transmitted quantum data brings important practical benefits. More generally, the quantum information theory primarily investigates quantum data manipulation under locality constraints, so our protocols connect naturally to these investigations. Our protocols increase the encoding capacity of QKD protocols. Not only our proposed processes of compression and decompression are very simple, but also entanglement compression using isometric tensors can be implemented by using quantum circuits and current technology. Because many ideas for designing of quantum information processing equipment envision that a network composed of relatively small quantum processors sending quantum information between nodes, it is greatly significant to find appropriate protocols for compressing the transmitted quantum data .

Deterministic Generation of Entangled Photonic Cluster States from Quantum Dot Molecules

While multiphoton entangled states are the essential building blocks of quantum photonic technologies, large-scale production of such states has proven to be difficult. This study utilizes the unique structure of hole spins in quantum dot molecules to propose an approach that overcomes many of the existing obstacles in the deterministic generation of such states. With high fidelity and production rates that are unmatched among currently available protocols, this proposal seems quite promising as a basis for tomorrow's optical quantum communication hardware.

Scalable Generation of Multiphoton Entangled States by Active Feed-Forward and Multiplexing.

Multiphoton entangled quantum states are key to advancing quantum technologies such as multiparty quantum communications, quantum sensing, or quantum computation. Their scalable generation, however, remains an experimental challenge. Current methods for generating these states rely on stitching together photons from probabilistic sources, and state generation rates drop exponentially in the number of photons. Here, we implement a system based on active feed-forward and multiplexing that addresses this challenge. We demonstrate the scalable generation of four-photon and six-photon Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states, increasing generation rates by factors of 9 and 35, respectively. This is consistent with the exponential enhancement compared to the standard nonmultiplexed approach that is predicted by our theory. These results facilitate the realization of practical multiphoton protocols for photonic quantum technologies.

All-Photonic Architecture for Scalable Quantum Computing with Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger States

Linear optical quantum computing is beset by the lack of deterministic entangling operations besides photon loss. Motivated by advancements at the experimental front in deterministic generation of various kinds of multiphoton entangled states, we propose an architecture for linear-optical quantum computing that harnesses the availability of three-photon Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states. Our architecture and its subvariants use polarized photons in GHZ states, polarization beam splitters, delay lines, optical switches and on-off detectors. We concatenate topological quantum error correction code with three-qubit repetition codes and estimate that our architecture can tolerate remarkably high photon-loss rate of $11.5 \%$; this makes a drastic change that is at least an order higher than those of known proposals. Further, considering three-photon GHZ states as resources, we estimate the resource overheads to perform gate operations with an accuracy of $10^{-6}~(10^{-15})$ to be $2.0\times10^6~(5.6\times10^7)$. Compared to other all-photonic schemes, our architecture is also resource-efficient. In addition, the resource overhead can be even further improved if larger GHZ states are available. Given its striking enhancement in the photon loss threshold and the recent progress in generating multiphoton entanglement, our scheme will make scalable photonic quantum computing a step closer to reality.

Topologically protected quantum entanglement emitters

Entanglement and topology portray nature at the fundamental level but differently. Entangled states of particles are intrinsically sensitive to the environment, whereas the topological phases of matter are naturally robust against environmental perturbations. Harnessing topology to protect entanglement has great potential for reliable quantum applications. Generating topologically protected entanglement, however, remains a significant challenge, requiring the operation of complex quantum devices in extreme conditions. Here we report topologically protected entanglement emitters that emit a topological Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen state and a multiphoton entangled state from a monolithically integrated plug-and-play silicon photonic chip in ambient conditions. The device emulating a photonic anomalous Floquet insulator allows the generation of four-photon topological entangled states at non-trivial edge modes, verified by the observation of a reduced de Broglie wavelength. Remarkably, we show that the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen entanglement can be topologically protected against artificial structure defects by comparing the state fidelities of 0.968 ± 0.004 and 0.951 ± 0.010 for perfect and defected emitters, respectively. Our topologically protected devices may find applications in quantum computation and in the study of quantum topological physics.

Photonic resource state generation from a minimal number of quantum emitters

Multi-photon entangled graph states are a fundamental resource in quantum communication networks, distributed quantum computing, and sensing. These states can in principle be created deterministically from quantum emitters such as optically active quantum dots or defects, atomic systems, or superconducting qubits. However, finding efficient schemes to produce such states has been a long-standing challenge. Here, we present an algorithm that, given a desired multi-photon graph state, determines the minimum number of quantum emitters and precise operation sequences that can produce it. The algorithm itself and the resulting operation sequence both scale polynomially in the size of the photonic graph state, allowing one to obtain efficient schemes to generate graph states containing hundreds or thousands of photons.

Integrable high-efficiency generation of three-photon entangled states by a single incident photon

Generation of multi-photon entangled states with high efficiency in integrated photonic quantum systems is still a big challenge. The usual three-photon generation efficiency based on the third-order nonlinear effect is extremely low. Here, we propose a scheme to generate three-photon correlated states, which are entangled states in frequency space and bound states in real space, with high efficiency. This method relies on two crucial processes. On one hand, by employing a Sagnac interferometer, an incident photon can be transformed into a symmetric superposition of the clockwise and counterclockwise modes of the Sagnac loop, which can then be perfectly absorbed by the emitter. On the other hand, the coupling strengths of the two transition paths of the emitter to the Sagnac loop are set to be equal, under which the absorbed photon can be emitted completely from the cascaded transition path due to quantum interference. By adjusting the coupling strengths among the three transition paths of the emitter and the waveguide modes, we can control the spectral entanglement and spatial separation among the three photons. Our proposal can be used to generate three-photon entangled states on demand, and the efficiency can be higher than 90% with some practical parameters, which can find important applications in integrated quantum information processing.

Fidelity of time-bin-entangled multiphoton states from a quantum emitter

We devise a mathematical framework for assessing the fidelity of multi-photon entangled states generated by a single solid-state quantum emitter, such as a quantum dot or a nitrogen-vacancy center. Within this formalism, we theoretically study the role of imperfections present in real systems on the generation of time-bin encoded Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger and one-dimensional cluster states. We consider both fundamental limitations, such as the effect of phonon-induced dephasing, interaction with the nuclear spin bath, and second-order emissions, as well as technological imperfections, such as branching effects, non-perfect filtering, and photon losses. In a companion paper, we consider a particular physical implementation based on a quantum dot emitter embedded in a photonic crystal waveguide and apply our theoretical formalism to assess the fidelities achievable with current technologies.

Heralded path-entangled NOON states generation from a reconfigurable photonic chip

Maximal multi-photon entangled states, known as NOON states, play an essential role in quantum metrology. With the number of photons growing, NOON states are becoming increasingly powerful and advantageous for obtaining supersensitive and super-resolved measurements. In this paper, we propose a universal scheme for generating three- and four-photon path-entangled NOON states on a reconfigurable photonic chip via photons subtracted from pairs and detected by heralding counters. Our method is postselection free, enabling phase supersensitive measurements and sensing at the Heisenberg limit. Our NOON-state generator allows for integration of quantum light sources as well as practical and portable precision phase-related measurements.

Feasible time-bin entanglement purification based on sum-frequency generation.

High quality time-bin entanglement is widely exploited to achieve the purposes of fundamental tests of physics and the implementation of quantum communication protocols both in free space and optical fiber propagation. However, the imperfect approaches of generating time-bin entangled state will degrade its quality and limit its practical application. Entanglement purification is to distill high quality entangled states from low quality entangled states. In this paper, we present the first entanglement purification protocol (EPP) for time-bin entanglement. We first explain this EPP for two-photon time-bin entangled state and then extend it to the system of multi-photon time-bin entangled state. We also design a possible realization of this EPP with practical spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC) source. Differ from the conventional EPPs, this EPP does not require the sophisticated controlled-not (CNOT) gate or similar operations, and it uses the feasible sum-frequency generation (SFG) to perform the purification. Moreover, the double-pair noise emitted from the SPDC source can be eliminated automatically which is the other advantage of this EPP. If we combine with the faithful entanglement swapping, this EPP may have potential to be a part of full quantum repeaters.

Reconfigurable multiphoton entangled states based on quantum photonic chips.

Multipartite entanglement is one of the most prominent features of quantum mechanics and is the key ingredient in quantum information processing. Seeking for an advantageous way to generate it is of great value. Here we propose two different schemes to prepare multiphoton entangled states on a quantum photonic chip that are both based on the theory of entanglement on the graph. The first scheme is to construct graphs for multiphoton states by the network of spatially anti-bunching two-photon sources. The second one is to construct graphs by the linear beam-splitter network, which can generate W and Dicke states efficiently with simple structure. Both schemes can be scaled up in the photon number and can be reconfigured for different types of multiphoton states. This study supplies a systematic solution for the on-chip generation of multiphoton entangled states and will promote the practical development of multiphoton quantum technologies.

Quadrupole topological phases in the zero-dimensional optical cavity

The quadrupole topological insulator, which supports robust corner states, has been recently demonstrated in two-dimensional (2D) spatial lattices. Here, we design the first photonic quadrupole topological insulator in fully synthetic spaces with the utilization of 0D optical cavity. The frequency and orbital angular momentum (OAM) of light are used to form the 2D synthetic spaces. Four degenerate polarization states are mapped to the internal lattice sites within the unit cell. By suitably engineering the coupling between cavity modes with different frequencies, OAMs and polarizations, the ideal synthetic quadrupole topological insulator is obtained. By using the robust synthetic corner states, we present the possibility for the realization of topological transportation of multi-photon entangled states. Our designed synthetic photonic quadrupole insulator proposes a unique platform to investigate higher-order topological phases in lower-dimensional systems and possesses potential applications in quantum information and optical communication.

Generation of a frequency-degenerate four-photon entangled state using a silicon nanowire

Integrated photonics is becoming an ideal platform for generating two-photon entangled states with high brightness, high stability, and scalability. This high brightness and high quality of photon pair sources encourages researchers further to study and manipulate multiphoton entangled states. Here, we experimentally demonstrate frequency-degenerate four-photon entangled state generation based on a single silicon nanowire 1 cm in length. The polarization encoded entangled states are generated with the help of a Sagnac loop using additional optical elements. The states are analyzed using quantum interference and state tomography techniques. As an example, we show that the generated quantum states can be used to achieve phase super-resolution. Our work provides a method for preparing indistinguishable multi-photon entangled states and realizing quantum algorithms in a compact on-chip setting.

On-Chip Multiphoton Entangled States by Path Identity

Multiphoton entanglement, as a quantum resource, plays an essential role in linear optical quantum information processing. Krenn et al. (Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 080401 2017) proposed an innovative scheme that generating entanglement by path identity, in which two-photon interference (called Hong-Ou-Mandel effect) is not necessary in experiment. However, the experiments in this scheme have strict requirements in stability and scalability, which is difficult to be realized in bulk optics. To solve this problem, in this paper we first propose an on-chip scheme to generate multi-photon polarization entangled states, including Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states and W states. Moreover, we also present a class of generalized graphs for W states (odd-number-photon) by path identity in theory. The on-chip scheme can be implemented in existing integrated optical technology which is meaningful for multi-party entanglement distribution in quantum communication networks.

A quantum dot as a source of time-bin entangled multi-photon states

A quantum computer has the potential to revolutionize multiple industries by enabling a drastic speed-up relative to classical computers for certain quantum algorithms and simulations. Linear optical quantum computing is an approach that uses photons as qubits, which are known for suffering little from decoherence. A source of multiple entangled and indistinguishable photons would be a significant step in the development of an optical quantum computer. Consequently, multiple proposals for the generation of such a stream of photons have recently been put forward. Here we introduce an alternative scheme based on a semiconductor quantum dot (QD) embedded in an optical microcavity in a magnetic field. A single charge carrier trapped in the dot has an associated spin that can be controlled by ultrashort optical pulses. Photons are sequentially generated by resonant scattering from the QD, while the charge spin is used to determine the encoding of the photons into time-bins. In this way a multi-photon entangled state can be gradually built up. With a simple optical pulse sequence we demonstrate a proof of principle experiment of our proposal by showing that the time-bin of a single photon is dependent on the measured state of the trapped charge spin.