利用Sagnac干涉仪实现光子轨道角动量分束器

光子轨道角动量量子态具有高维和光学涡旋特性, 在经典和量子领域展示出了巨大的应用潜力, 目前对其的研究已成为物理学的一个热点. 本实验研究了利用Sagnac干涉仪干涉的方法将具有不同轨道角动量的光束无破坏地分离到不同的路径, 即实现光子轨道角动量分束器. 实验中利用此分束器验证了对几种不同轨道角动量态(包含叠加态)的分离, 得到了与理论预期相符的实验结果. 这种对轨道角动量态的区分的方法相比已有的其他区分方法具有较好的稳定性, 而且可用于区分叠加态, 也可以达到单光子水平, 最重要的是实现了不同的轨道角动量本征态无破坏的与路径比特耦合. 这种新方法对高密度通信、量子纠缠、量子保密通信、量子计算与量子信息等方面有着重要的意义.     

Quantum interference between a single-photon Fock state and a coherent state

We derive analytical expressions for the single mode quantum field state at the individual output ports of a beam splitter when a single-photon Fock state and a coherent state are incident on the input ports. The output states turn out to be a statistical mixture between a displaced Fock state and a coherent state. Consequently we are able to find an analytical expression for the corresponding Wigner function. Because of the generality of our calculations the obtained results are valid for all passive and lossless optical four port devices. We show further how the results can be adapted to the case of the Mach-Zehnder interferometer. In addition we consider the case for which the single-photon Fock state is replaced with a general input state: a coherent input state displaces each general quantum state at the output port of a beam splitter with the displacement parameter being the amplitude of the coherent state.     

Entangling single photons on a beamsplitter

We report on a scheme for the creation of time-bin entangled states out of two subsequent single photons. Both photons arrive on the same input port of a beamsplitter and the situation in which the photons leave the beamsplitter on different output ports is post-selected. We derive a full quantum mechanical analysis of such time-bin entanglement for emitters subject to uncorrelated dephasing processes and apply this model to sequential single photons emerging from a single semiconductor quantum dot. Our results indicate that the visibility of entanglement is degraded by decoherence effects in the quantum dot, but can be restored by use of CQED effects, namely the Purcell effect.     

Demonstration of a single-photon router in the microwave regime

We have embedded an artificial atom, a superconducting transmon qubit, in an open transmission line and investigated the strong scattering of incident microwave photons (～6 GHz). When an input coherent state, with an average photon number N?1 is on resonance with the artificial atom, we observe extinction of up to 99.6% in the forward propagating field. We use two-tone spectroscopy to study scattering from excited states and we observe electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). We then use EIT to make a single-photon router, where we can control to what output port an incoming signal is delivered. The maximum on-off ratio is around 99% with a rise and fall time on the order of nanoseconds, consistent with theoretical expectations. The router can easily be extended to have multiple output ports and it can be viewed as a rudimentary quantum node, an important step towards building quantum information networks.     

Heralding two-photon and four-photon path entanglement on a chip

Generating quantum entanglement is not only an important scientific endeavor, but will be essential to realizing quantum-enhanced technologies, in particular, quantum-enhanced measurements with precision beyond classical limits. We investigate the heralded generation of multiphoton entanglement for quantum metrology using a reconfigurable integrated waveguide device in which projective measurement of auxiliary photons heralds the generation of path-entangled states. We use four and six-photon inputs, to analyze the heralding process of two- and four-photon NOON states-a superposition of N photons in two paths, capable of enabling phase supersensitive measurements at the Heisenberg limit. Realistic devices will include imperfections; as part of the heralded state preparation, we demonstrate phase superresolution within our chip with a state that is more robust to photon loss.     

Quantum Statistical Behaviors of Interaction of an Atomic Bose-Einstein Condensate with Laser

We have investigated quantum statistical behaviors of photons and atoms in interaction of an atomic Bose Einstein condensate with quantized laser field. When the quantized laser field is initially prepared in a superposition state which exhibits holes in its photon-number distribution, while the atomic field is initially in a Fock state, it is found that there is energy exchange between photons and atoms. For the input and output states, the photons and atoms may exhibit the sub-Poissonian distribution. The input and output laser fields may exhibit quadrature squeezing, but for the atomic field, only the output state exhibits quadrature squeezing. It is shown that there exists the violation of the Cauchy-Schwartz inequality, which means that the correlation between photons and atoms is nonclassical.``     

Quantum Statistical Behaviors of Interaction of an Atomic Bose-Einstein Condensate with Laser

We have investigated quantum statistical behaviors of photons and atoms in interaction of an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate with quantized laser field. When the quantized laser field is initially prepared in a superposition state which exhibits holes in its photon-number distribution, while the atomic field is initially in a Fock state, it is found that there is energy exchange between photons and atoms. For the input and output states, the photons and atoms may exhibit the sub-Poissonian distribution. The input and output laser fields may exhibit quadrature squeezing, but for the atomic field, only the output state exhibits quadrature squeezing. It is shown that there exists the violation of the Cauchy-Schwartz inequality, which means that the correlation between photons and atoms is nonclassical.     

Experimental high-gain quantum-injected optical parametric amplification and multiphoton phase-covariant cloning

We investigate multiphoton states generated by high-gain optical parametric amplification of a single injected photon—polarization encoded as a qubit. The experimental configuration exploits the optimal phase-covariant cloning. The output state of the apparatus is found to exhibit the quantum superposition property of mesoscopic multiphoton assemblies involving about 300 photons. This work represents an experimental advance toward the test of several fundamental quantum processes in mesoscopic or macroscopic frameworks.     

Realization of an optimally distinguishable multiphoton quantum superposition

We report the realization of an entangled quantum superposition of M approximately 12 photons by multiple universal cloning of a single-photon qubit via the high gain, quantum-injected optical parametric amplification. The system has been found extremely resilient to decoherence. By quantum tomography, the nonseparability and the quantum superposition are demonstrated for the mesoscopic output state of the dynamic "closed system."     

Generation of a displaced qubit and entangled displaced photon state via conditional measurement and their properties

We study optical schemes for generating both a displaced photon and a displaced qubit via conditional measurement. Combining one mode prepared in different microscopic states (one-mode qubit, single photon, vacuum state) and another mode in macroscopic states (coherent state, single photon added coherent state), a conditional state in the other output mode exhibits properties of a superposition of the displaced vacuum and a single photon. We propose to use the displaced qubit and entangled states composed of the displaced photon as components for quantum information processing. Basic states of such a qubit are distinguishable from each other with high fidelity. We show that the qubit reveals both microscopic and macroscopic properties. Entangled displaced states with a coherent phase as an additional degree of freedom are introduced. We show that additional degree of freedom enables to implement complete Bell state measurement of the entangled displaced photon states.     

单光子纠缠态并发度的直接测量

通过分析光学分束器对单光子态的作用关系,提出了一个利用分束器和光子数探测器的单光子纠缠的直接测量方案.方案中用到单光子与空间模纠缠及其两个备份,并让它们通过一个50:50的分束器.选用并发度为纠缠度量,其可由单光子探测器的探测概率直接获得.此方案不需复杂的量子态层析方法,同时只用到在量子信息处理中常用的光学器件,增强了方案在实验上实现的可行性.     

Few-photon routing via chiral light-matter couplings

A quantum router is one of the essential elements in the quantum network. Conventional routers only direct a single photon from one quantum channel into another. Here, we propose a few-photon router. The active element of the router is a single qubit chirally coupled to two independent waveguides simultaneously, where each waveguide mode provides a quantum channel. By introducing the operators of the scatter-free space and the controllable space, the output state of the one-photon and two-photon scattering are derived analytically. It is found that the qubit can direct one and two photons from one port of the incident waveguide to an arbitrarily selected port of the other waveguide with unity, respectively. However, two photons cannot be simultaneously routed to the same port due to the anti-bunch effect.     

Entanglement test on a microscopic-macroscopic system

A macrostate consisting of N approximately 3.5x10{4} photons in a quantum superposition and entangled with a far apart single-photon state (microstate) is generated. Precisely, an entangled photon pair is created by a nonlinear optical process; then one photon of the pair is injected into an optical parametric amplifier operating for any input polarization state, i.e., into a phase-covariant cloning machine. Such transformation establishes a connection between the single photon and the multiparticle fields. We then demonstrate the nonseparability of the bipartite system by adopting a local filtering technique within a positive operator valued measurement.     

Formation of nonclassical states of light in media with a three-photon resonance

The process of simultaneous absorption of three photons in a medium subjected to a three-photon parametric perturbation is considered. It is shown that in such a medium one can observe the formation of the radiation field states, which are the quantum superposition of three coherent components. One-photon and twophoton absorption processes in the medium also destroy the interference between the components of the superposition state. The states being formed are investigated in both the temporal development (numerically) and the stationary limit (numerically and analytically); the Wigner functions, as well as the quantum entropy, are calculated for a whole series of initial states. It is shown that depending on the initial state of the radiation field, the interference between the three-component superposition states being formed can lead, for example, to the almost total localization of the system in a two-component state or to the destruction of the interference between different coherent components.     

Interference of two photons of different color

We consider the interference of two photons with different colors in the context of a Hong-Ou-Mandel experiment, in which single photons enter each of the input ports of a beam splitter, and exit together in the same, albeit undetermined, output port. Such interference is possible if one uses an active (energy-non-conserving) beam splitter. We find scenarios in which one “red” and one “blue” photon enter the beam splitter, and either two red or two blue photons exit, but never one of each color. We show how the precise form of the active beam-splitter transformation determines in what way the spectral degrees of freedom of the input photons should be related to each other for perfect destructive interference of the different-color components in the output. We discuss two examples of active beam splitters: one is a gedanken experiment involving a moving mirror and the other is a more realistic example involving four-wave mixing in an optical fiber.     

Optical Parametric Amplification of Single Photon: Statistical Properties and Quantum Interference

By using phase space method, we theoretically investigate the quantum statistical properties and quantum interference of optical parametric amplification of single photon. The statistical properties, such as the Wigner function (WF), average photon number, photon number distribution and parity, are derived analytically for the fields of the two output ports. The results indicate that the fields in the output ports are multiphoton states rather than single photon state due to the amplification of the optical parametric amplifiers (OPA). In addition, the phase sensitivity is also examined by using the detection scheme of parity measurement.     

Quantum Computation of Fuzzy Numbers

We study the possibility of performing fuzzy set operations on a quantum computer. After giving a brief overview of the necessary quantum computational and fuzzy set theoretical concepts we demonstrate how to encode the membership function of a digitized fuzzy number in the state space of a quantum register by using a suitable superposition of tensor product states that form a computational basis. We show that a standard quantum adder is capable to perform Kaufmann's addition of fuzzy numbers in the course of only one run by acting at once on all states in the superposition, which leads to a considerable gain in the number of required operations with respect to performing such addition on a classical computer.     

Experimental state tomography of itinerant single microwave photons

A wide range of experiments studying microwave photons localized in superconducting cavities have made important contributions to our understanding of the quantum properties of radiation. Propagating microwave photons, however, have so far been studied much less intensely. Here we present measurements in which we reconstruct the quantum state of itinerant single photon Fock states and their superposition with the vacuum by analyzing moments of the measured amplitude distribution up to fourth order. Using linear amplifiers and quadrature amplitude detectors, we have developed efficient methods to separate the detected single photon signal from the noise added by the amplifier. From our measurement data we have also reconstructed the corresponding Wigner function.     

Enhancement of feasibility of macroscopic quantum superposition state with the quantum Rabi-Stark model

We propose an efficient scheme to generate a macroscopical quantum superposition state with a cavity optomechanical system, which is composed of a quantum Rabi-Stark model coupling to a mechanical oscillator. In a low-energy subspace of the Rabi-Stark model, the dressed states and then the effective Hamiltonian of the system are given. Due to the coupling of the mechanical oscillator and the atom-cavity system, if the initial state of the atom-cavity system is one of the dressed states, the mechanical oscillator will evolve into a corresponding coherent state. Thus, if the initial state of the atom-cavity system is a superposition of two dressed states, a coherent state superposition of the mechanical oscillator can be generated. The quantum coherence and their distinguishable properties of the two coherent states are exhibited by Wigner distribution. We show that the Stark term can enhance significantly the feasibility and quantum coherence of the generated macroscopic quantum superposition state of the oscillator.     

Resource-efficient linear optical quantum computation

We introduce a scheme for linear optics quantum computation, that makes no use of teleported gates, and requires stable interferometry over only the coherence length of the photons. We achieve a much greater degree of efficiency and a simpler implementation than previous proposals. We follow the "cluster state" measurement based quantum computational approach, and show how cluster states may be efficiently generated from pairs of maximally polarization entangled photons using linear optical elements. We demonstrate the universality and usefulness of generic parity measurements, as well as introducing the use of redundant encoding of qubits to enable utilization of destructive measurements--both features of use in a more general context.