Two-photon System Research Articles

Robust hyperparallel photonic quantum entangling gate with cavity QED.

Under the balance condition of the diamond nitrogen vacancy center embedded in an optical cavity as a result of cavity quantum electrodynamics, we present a robust hyperparallel photonic controlled-phase-flip gate for a two-photon system in both the polarization and spatial-mode degrees of freedom (DOFs), in which the noise caused by the inequality of two reflection coefficients can be depressed efficiently. This gate doubles the quantum entangling operation synchronously on a photon system and can reduce the quantum resources consumed largely and depress the photonic dissipation efficiently, compared with the two cascade quantum entangling gates in one DOF. It has a near unit fidelity. Moreover, we show that the balance condition can be obtained in both the weak coupling regime and the strong coupling regime, and the high-fidelity quantum gate operation is easier to be realized in the balance condition than the ones in the ideal condition in experiment.

Two-photon microscopy with enhanced contrast and resolution.

A method combining the saturation effect with the ratio concerned quadratic intensity weighted subtraction (RQIWS) algorithm for resolution and contrast enhancement in a two-photon microscopy system is presented in this paper. In the proposed method, the saturation effect is utilized to get a profile-extended solid spot and a center-shrunken doughnut-shaped spot for a smaller effective point spread function, which enhances the resolution of the system. The RQIWS algorithm uses the intensity ratio of the two original images acquired respectively with the solid spot and the doughnut-shaped spot as one of the subtraction parameters and takes the fluorescence quadratic dependence of excitation intensity into account for better subtraction results compared with the intensity weighted subtraction algorithm in a two-photon excitation system. The capability in the enhancement of resolution and contrast of the method proposed is demonstrated successfully both by theoretical simulations and experimental results.

The Development and Control of a Long-Stroke Precision Stage

A large-stroke precision positioning stage, which includes a planar piezoelectric transducer (PZT) stage and a three-dimensional stepper motor stage is presented here. Stage transfer functions were obtained by experiments. An integral control with gain-scheduling was designed for the PZT stage, while robust loop-shaping control with feed-forward compensation was implemented for the stepper motors. The stages were integrated and a double-layer control structure was designed for the combined stage to allow nanopositioning for long travel. Experiments were then carried out, and the results showed that precision positioning for long strokes could be achieved with our combined stage. Our stage is also suitable for integration with manufacturing modules, such as a two-photon polymerization system for the fabrication of large-scale micro-structures.

Spatial landscape of oxygen in and around microvasculature during epileptic events.

Measuring changes in cerebral oxygen in tissue microdomains during epilepsy is important to identify hypoxic potential. Here, using a custom-built two-photon microscopy system, we present microscopic measurements of oxygen partial pressure ([Formula: see text]) in cortical microvessels and tissue of anesthetized mice during 4-aminopyridine (4-AP)-induced epileptic seizures. Investigating epileptic events, we characterized the distribution of the "initial dip" in [Formula: see text] in arterioles, venules, and tissue near the 4-AP injection site. Our results reveal a correlation between the percent change in [Formula: see text] during the "initial dip" and the diameter of nearest arterioles and venules.

Robust spatial-polarization hyperentanglement distribution of two-photon systems against collective noise

Hyperentanglement is a significant resource for high-capacity quantum communication. Here we present a robust spatial-polarization hyperentanglement distribution scheme for two-photon systems. The error on the polarization states of two-photon systems transmitted from two paths can be corrected resorting to the robust time-bin entanglement which suffers little from the channel noise. The spatial bit-flip error takes place with a very small probability and the spatial phase-flip error can be precluded by adjusting the path-length of spatial modes. Using this scheme, the two parties in quantum communication can share a maximally hyperentangled state of two-photon systems in a deterministic way, which will improve the efficiency of quantum communication largely.

Two-photon polymerization of microstructures by a non-diffraction multifoci pattern generated from a superposed Bessel beam.

In this Letter, superposed Bessel beams (SBBs) are realized by alternatively imprinting holograms of opposite-order Bessel beams along the radial direction on a spatial light modulator. The propagation invariance and non-rotation properties of SBBs are theoretically predicted and experimentally demonstrated. The focusing property of SBBs with a high numerical aperture (NA) objective is investigated with the Debye vectorial diffraction theory. Near the focal plane, a circularly distributed multiple foci pattern is achieved. The multiple foci generated from SBBs are adopted in a two-photon fabrication system, and micropattern fabrication by a single exposure is demonstrated. Facile fabrication of three-dimensional microstructures with SBBs is realized by dynamically controlling the number of focal spots, and the diameter and rotation of the focal pattern.

Hyperentanglement purification using imperfect spatial entanglement.

As the interaction between the photons and the environment which will make the entangled photon pairs in less entangled states or even in mixed states, the security and the efficiency of quantum communication will decrease. We present an efficient hyperentanglement purification protocol that distills nonlocal high-fidelity hyper-entangled Bell states in both polarization and spatial-mode degrees of freedom from ensembles of two-photon system in mixed states using linear optics. Here, we consider the influence of the photon loss in the channel which generally is ignored in the conventional entanglement purification and hyperentanglement purification (HEP) schemes. Compared with previous HEP schemes, our HEP scheme decreases the requirement for nonlocal resources by employing high-dimensional mode-check measurement, and leads to a higher fidelity, especially in the range where the conventional HEP schemes become invalid but our scheme still can work.

Error-detected generation and complete analysis of hyperentangled Bell states for photons assisted by quantum-dot spins in double-sided optical microcavities.

We construct an error-detected block, assisted by the quantum-dot spins in double-sided optical microcavities. With this block, we propose three error-detected schemes for the deterministic generation, the complete analysis, and the complete nondestructive analysis of hyperentangled Bell states in both the polarization and spatial-mode degrees of freedom of two-photon systems. In these schemes, the errors can be detected, which can improve their fidelities largely, far different from other previous schemes assisted by the interaction between the photon and the QD-cavity system. Our scheme for the deterministic generation of hyperentangled two-photon systems can be performed by repeat until success. These features make our schemes more useful in high-capacity quantum communication with hyperentanglement in the future.

General hyperconcentration of photonic polarization-time-bin hyperentanglement assisted by nitrogen-vacancy centers coupled to resonators.

Entanglement concentration protocol (ECP) is used to extract the maximally entangled states from less entangled pure states. Here we present a general hyperconcentration protocol for two-photon systems in partially hyperentangled Bell states that decay with the interrelation between the time-bin and the polarization degrees of freedom (DOFs), resorting to an input-output process with respect to diamond nitrogen-vacancy centers coupled to resonators. We show that the resource can be utilized sufficiently and the success probability is largely improved by iteration of the hyper-ECP process. Besides, our hyper-ECP can be directly extended to concentrate nonlocal partially hyperentangled N-photon Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states, and the success probability remains unchanged with the growth of the number of photons. Moreover, the time-bin entanglement is a useful DOF and it only requires one path for transmission, which means it not only economizes on a large amount of quantum resources but also relaxes from the path-length dispersion in long-distance quantum communication.

Hyperentanglement purification for two-photon six-qubit quantum systems

Recently, two-photon six-qubit hyperentangled states were produced in experiment and they can improve the channel capacity of quantum communication largely. Here we present a scheme for the hyperentanglement purification of nonlocal two-photon systems in three degrees of freedom (DOFs), including the polarization, the first-longitudinal-momentum, and the second longitudinal momentum DOFs. Our hyperentanglement purification protocol (hyper-EPP) is constructed with two steps resorting to parity-check quantum nondemolition measurement on the three DOFs and SWAP gates, respectively. With these two steps, the bit-flip errors in the three DOFs can be corrected efficiently. Also, we show that using SWAP gates is a universal method for hyper-EPP in the polarization DOF and multiple longitudinal momentum DOFs. The implementation of our hyper-EPP is assisted by nitrogen-vacancy centers in optical microcavities, which could be achieved with current techniques. It is useful for long-distance high-capacity quantum communication with two-photon six-qubit hyperentanglement.

Hyperparallel optical quantum computation assisted by atomic ensembles embedded in double-sided optical cavities

We propose an effective, scalable, hyperparallel photonic quantum computation scheme in which photonic qubits are hyperencoded both in the spatial degrees of freedom (DOF) and the polarization DOF of each photon. The deterministic hyper-controlled-not (hyper-cnot) gate on a two-photon system is attainable with our interesting interface between the polarized photon and the collective spin wave (magnon) of an atomic ensemble embedded in a double-sided optical cavity, and it doubles the operations in the conventional quantum cnot gate. Moreover, we present a compact hyper-cnot${}^{N}$ gate on $N+1$ hyperencoded photons with only two auxiliary cavity-magnon systems, not more, and it can be faithfully constituted with current experimental techniques. Our proposal enables various applications with the hyperencoded photons in quantum computing and quantum networks.

Distributed Photonic Quantum Computations Assisted by Atomic Ensembles

Distributed quantum computation requires that quantum operations may be acted on remote logical qubits. We investigate the possibility of the distributed quantum computation for nonlocal photons assisted by cavity quantum electrodynamics. We first give a compact circuit for the controlled-NOT gate on a remote two-photon system. For the Toffoli gate, we introduce two circuits for a bipartite system with one photonic Einstein-Podolski-Rosen (EPR) entanglement. Two EPR pairs are required for a tripartite system. These Toffoli gates cost a half of entanglements required in the previous teleportation-based quantum computation. These elementary gates may be combined flexibly up to special decompositions of joint system in large-scale quantum applications.

Quantum computation based on photonic systems with two degrees of freedom assisted by the weak cross-Kerr nonlinearity.

Most of previous quantum computations only take use of one degree of freedom (DoF) of photons. An experimental system may possess various DoFs simultaneously. In this paper, with the weak cross-Kerr nonlinearity, we investigate the parallel quantum computation dependent on photonic systems with two DoFs. We construct nearly deterministic controlled-not (CNOT) gates operating on the polarization spatial DoFs of the two-photon or one-photon system. These CNOT gates show that two photonic DoFs can be encoded as independent qubits without auxiliary DoF in theory. Only the coherent states are required. Thus one half of quantum simulation resources may be saved in quantum applications if more complicated circuits are involved. Hence, one may trade off the implementation complexity and simulation resources by using different photonic systems. These CNOT gates are also used to complete various applications including the quantum teleportation and quantum superdense coding.

Wide field-of-view, multi-region, two-photon imaging of neuronal activity in the mammalian brain.

Two-photon calcium imaging provides an optical readout of neuronal activity in populations of neurons with subcellular resolution. However, conventional two-photon imaging systems are limited in their field of view to ~1 mm2, precluding the visualization of multiple cortical areas simultaneously. Here, we demonstrate a two-photon microscope with an expanded field of view (>9.5 mm2) for rapidly reconfigurable simultaneous scanning of widely separated populations of neurons. We custom designed and assembled an optimized scan engine, objective, and two independently positionable, temporally multiplexed excitation pathways. We used this new microscope to measure activity correlations between two cortical visual areas in mice during visual processing.

Assessing the significance of fidelity as a figure of merit in quantum state reconstruction of discrete and continuous-variable systems

We experimentally address the significance of fidelity as a figure of merit in quantum state reconstruction of discrete (DV) and continuous variable (CV) quantum optical systems. In particular, we analyze the use of fidelity in quantum homodyne tomography of CV states and maximum-likelihood polarization tomography of DV ones, focussing attention on nonclassicality, entanglement and quantum discord as a function of fidelity to a target state. Our findings show that high values of fidelity, despite well quantifying geometrical proximity in the Hilbert space, may be obtained for states displaying opposite physical properties, e.g. quantum or semiclassical features. In particular, we analyze in details the quantum-to-classical transition for squeezed thermal states of a single-mode optical system and for Werner states of a two-photon polarization qubit system.

Quantum Computation Based on Photons with Three Degrees of Freedom.

Quantum systems are important resources for quantum computer. Different from previous encoding forms using quantum systems with one degree of freedom (DoF) or two DoFs, we investigate the possibility of photon systems encoding with three DoFs consisting of the polarization DoF and two spatial DoFs. By exploring the optical circular birefringence induced by an NV center in a diamond embedded in the photonic crystal cavity, we propose several hybrid controlled-NOT (hybrid CNOT) gates operating on the two-photon or one-photon system. These hybrid CNOT gates show that three DoFs may be encoded as independent qubits without auxiliary DoFs. Our result provides a useful way to reduce quantum simulation resources by exploring complex quantum systems for quantum applications requiring large qubit systems.

Analysis of bone tissues by intravital imaging

In recent years,"the fluorescent imaging techniques"has made rapid advances, it has become possible to observe the dynamics of living cells in individuals or tissues. It has been considered that it is extremely difficult to observe the living bone marrow directly because bone marrow is surrounded by a hard calcareous. But now, we established a method for observing the cells constituting the bone marrow of living mice in real time by the use of the intravital two-photon imaging system. In this article, we show the latest data and the reports about the hematopoietic stem cells and the leukemia cells by using the intravital imaging techniques, and also discuss its further application.

Complete nondestructive analysis of two-photon six-qubit hyperentangled Bell states assisted by cross-Kerr nonlinearity.

Hyperentanglement, the entanglement in several degrees of freedom (DOFs) of a quantum system, has attracted much attention as it can be used to increase both the channel capacity of quantum communication and its security largely. Here, we present the first scheme to completely distinguish the hyperentangled Bell states of two-photon systems in three DOFs with the help of cross-Kerr nonlinearity without destruction, including two longitudinal momentum DOFs and the polarization DOF. We use cross-Kerr nonlinearity to construct quantum nondemolition detectors which can be used to make a parity-check measurement and analyze Bell states of two-photon systems in different DOFs. Our complete scheme for two-photon six-qubit hyperentangled Bell-state analysis may be useful for the practical applications in quantum information, especially in long-distance high-capacity quantum communication.

Complete hyperentangled-Bell-state analysis for photonic qubits assisted by a three-level Λ-type system.

Hyperentangled Bell-state analysis (HBSA) is an essential method in high-capacity quantum communication and quantum information processing. Here by replacing the two-qubit controlled-phase gate with the two-qubit SWAP gate, we propose a scheme to distinguish the 16 hyperentangled Bell states completely in both the polarization and the spatial-mode degrees of freedom (DOFs) of two-photon systems. The proposed scheme reduces the use of two-qubit interaction which is fragile and cumbersome, and only one auxiliary particle is required. Meanwhile, it reduces the requirement for initializing the auxiliary particle which works as a temporary quantum memory, and does not have to be actively controlled or measured. Moreover, the state of the auxiliary particle remains unchanged after the HBSA operation, and within the coherence time, the auxiliary particle can be repeatedly used in the next HBSA operation. Therefore, the engineering complexity of our HBSA operation is greatly simplified. Finally, we discuss the feasibility of our scheme with current technologies.

Teleportation of a controlled-NOT gate for photon and electron-spin qubits assisted by the nitrogen-vacancy center

Teleportations of quantum gates are very important in the construction of quantum network and teleportation-based model of quantum computation. Assisted with nitrogenvacancy centers, we propose several schemes to teleport the quantum CNOT gate. Deterministic CNOT gate may be implemented on a remote two-photon system, remote two electron-spin system, hybrid photon-spin system or hybrid spin-photon system. Each photon only interacts with one spin each time. Moreover, quantum channel may be constructed by all combinations of the photon or electron-spin entanglement, or their hybrid entanglement. Since these electron-spin systems have experimentally shown a long coherence time even at the room temperature, our schemes provide useful ways for long-distance quantum applications.