No Arabic abstract
The evolution of quantum light through linear optical devices can be described by the scattering matrix $S$ of the system. For linear optical systems with $m$ possible modes, the evolution of $n$ input photons is given by a unitary matrix $U=varphi_{m,M}(S)$ given by a known homomorphism, $varphi_{m,M}$, which depends on the size of the resulting Hilbert space of the possible photon states, $M$. We present a method to decide whether a given unitary evolution $U$ for $n$ photons in $m$ modes can be achieved with linear optics or not and the inverse transformation $varphi_{m,M}^{-1}$ when the transformation can be implemented. Together with previous results, the method can be used to find a simple optical system which implements any quantum operation within the reach of linear optics. The results come from studying the adjoint map bewtween the Lie algebras corresponding to the Lie groups of the relevant unitary matrices.
Linear optical systems acting on photon number states produce many interesting evolutions, but cannot give all the allowed quantum operations on the input state. Using Toponogovs theorem from differential geometry, we propose an iterative method that, for any arbitrary quantum operator $U$ acting on $n$ photons in $m$ modes, returns an operator $widetilde{U}$ which can be implemented with linear optics. The approximation method is locally optimal and converges. The resulting operator $widetilde{U}$ can be translated into an experimental optical setup using previous results.
We investigate which pure states of $n$ photons in $d$ modes can be transformed into each other via linear optics, without post-selection. In other words, we study the local unitary (LU) equivalence classes of symmetric many-qudit states. Writing our state as $f^dagger|Omegarangle$, with $f^dagger$ a homogeneous polynomial in the mode creation operators, we propose two sets of LU-invariants: (a) spectral invariants, which are the eigenvalues of the operator $ff^dagger$, and (b) moments, each given by the norm of the symmetric component of a tensor power of the initial state, which can be computed as vacuum expectation values of $f^k(f^dagger)^k$. We provide scheme for experimental measurement of the later, as related to the post-selection probability of creating state $f^{dagger k}|Omegarangle$ from $k$ copies of $f^{dagger}|Omegarangle$.
The fundamental dynamics of quantum particles is neutral with respect to the arrow of time. And yet, our experiments are not: we observe quantum systems evolving from the past to the future, but not the other way round. A fundamental question is whether it is in principle possible to probe a quantum dynamics in the backward direction, or in more general combinations of the forward and the backward direction. To answer this question, we characterise all possible time-reversals that satisfy four natural requirements and we identify the largest set of quantum processes that can in principle be probed in both time directions. Then, we show that quantum theory is compatible with the existence of a new kind of operations where the arrow of time is indefinite. We explicitly construct one such operation, called the quantum time flip, and show that it cannot be realised by any quantum circuit with a definite direction of time. The quantum time flip offers an advantage in a game where a referee challenges a player to identify a hidden relation between two gates, and can be experimentally simulated with photonic systems, shedding light on the information-processing capabilities of exotic scenarios in which the arrow of time is in a quantum superposition.
The study of non-equilibrium physics from the perspective of the quantum limits of thermodynamics and fluctuation relations can be experimentally addressed with linear optical systems. We discuss recent experimental investigations in this scenario and present new proposed schemes and the potential advances they could bring to the field.
We consider the evolution of an arbitrary quantum dynamical semigroup of a finite-dimensional quantum system under frequent kicks, where each kick is a generic quantum operation. We develop a generalization of the Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff formula allowing to reformulate such pulsed dynamics as a continuous one. This reveals an adiabatic evolution. We obtain a general type of quantum Zeno dynamics, which unifies all known manifestations in the literature as well as describing new types.