No Arabic abstract
Attenuated laser pulses are often employed in place for single photons in order to test the efficiency of the elements of a quantum network. In this work we analyse theoretically the dynamics of storage of an attenuated light pulse (where the pulse intensity is at the single photon level) propagating along a transmission line and impinging on the mirror of a high finesse cavity. Storage is realised by the controlled transfer of the photonic excitations into a metastable state of an atom confined inside the cavity and occurs via a Raman transition with a suitably tailored laser pulse, which drives the atom and minimizes reflection at the cavity mirror. We determine the storage efficiency of the weak coherent pulse which is reached by protocols optimized for single-photon storage. We determine the figures of merit and we identify the conditions on an arbitrary pulse for which the storage dynamics approaches the one of a single photon. Our formalism can be extended to arbitrary types of input pulses and to quantum memories composed by spin ensembles, and serves as a basis for identifying the optimal protocols for storage and readout.
Using a dynamical quantum Zeno effect, we propose a general approach to control the coupling between a two-level system (TLS) and its surroundings, by modulating the energy level spacing of the TLS with a high frequency signal. We show that the TLS--surroundings interaction can be turned on or off when the ratio between the amplitude and the frequency of the modulating field is adjusted to be a zero of a Bessel function. The quantum Zeno effect of the TLS can also be observed by the vanishing of the photon reflection at these zeros. Based on these results, we propose a quantum switch to control the transport of a single photon in a 1D waveguide. Our analytical results agree well with numerical results using Floquet theory.
Single-photon pulses cannot be generated on demand, due to incompatible requirements of positive frequencies and positive times. Resulting states therefore contain small probabilities for multiphotons. We derive upper and lower bounds for the maximum fidelity of realizable states that approximate single-photon pulses. The bounds have implications for ultrafast optics; the maximum fidelity is low for pulses with few cycles or close to the onset, but increases rapidly as the pulse envelope varies more slowly. We also demonstrate strictly localized states that are close to single photons.
Single photons are the natural link between the nodes of a quantum network: they coherently propagate and interact with many types of quantum bits including natural and artificial atoms. Ideally, one atom should deterministically control the state of a photon and vice-versa. The interaction between free space photons and an atom is however intrinsically weak and many efforts have been dedicated to develop an efficient interface. Recently, it was shown that the propagation of light can be controlled by an atomic resonance coupled to a cavity or a single mode waveguide. Here we demonstrate that the state of a single artificial atom in a cavity can be efficiently controlled by a few-photon pulse. We study a quantum dot optimally coupled to an electrically-controlled cavity device, acting as a near optimal one-dimensional atom. By monitoring the exciton population through resonant fluorescence, we demonstrate Rabi oscillations with a $pi$-pulse of only 3.8 photons on average. The probability to flip the exciton quantum bit with a single photon Fock state is calculated to reach 55% in the same device.
Coherent parity check (CPC) codes are a new framework for the construction of quantum error correction codes that encode multiple qubits per logical block. CPC codes have a canonical structure involving successive rounds of bit and phase parity checks, supplemented by cross-checks to fix the code distance. In this paper, we provide a detailed introduction to CPC codes using conventional quantum circuit notation. We demonstrate the implementation of a CPC code on real hardware, by designing a [[4,2,2]] detection code for the IBM 5Q superconducting qubit device. Whilst the individual gate-error rates on the IBM device are too high to realise a fault tolerant quantum detection code, our results show that the syndrome information from a full encode-decode cycle of the [[4,2,2]] CPC code can be used to increase the output state fidelity by post-selection. Following this, we generalise CPC codes to other quantum technologies by showing that their structure allows them to be efficiently compiled using any experimentally realistic native two-qubit gate. We introduce a three-stage CPC design process for the construction of hardware-optimised quantum memories. As a proof-of-concept example, we apply our design process to an idealised linear seven-qubit ion trap. In the first stage of the process, we use exhaustive search methods to find a large set of [[7,3,3]] codes that saturate the quantum Hamming bound for seven qubits. We then optimise over the discovered set of codes to meet the hardware and layout demands of the ion trap device. We also discuss how the CPC design process will generalise to larger-scale codes and other qubit technologies.
We propose an approach to realize a quantum random number generator (QRNG) based on the photon number decision of weak laser pulses. This type of QRNG can generate true random numbers at a high speed and can be adjusted to zero bias conveniently, thus is suitable for the applications in quantum cryptography.