Large-scale silicon quantum photonics implementing arbitrary two-qubit processing

Abstract

Integrated optics is an engineering solution proposed for exquisite control of photonic quantum information. Here we use silicon photonics and the linear combination of quantum operators scheme to realise a fully programmable two-qubit quantum processor. The device is fabricated with readily available CMOS based processing and comprises four nonlinear photon-sources, four filters, eightytwo beam splitters and fifty-eight individually addressable phase shifters. To demonstrate performance, we programmed the device to implement ninety-eight various two-qubit unitary operations (with average quantum process fidelity of 93.2±4.5%), a two-qubit quantum approximate optimization algorithm and efficient simulation of Szegedy directed quantum walks. This fosters further use of the linear combination architecture with silicon photonics for future photonic quantum processors.The range and quality of control that a device has over quantum physics determines the extent of quantum information processing (QIP) tasks that it can perform. One device capable of performing any given QIP task is an ultimate goal 1 and silicon quantum photonics 2 has attractive traits to achieve this: photonic qubits are robust to environmental noise 5 , single qubit operations can be performed with high precision 16 , a high density of reconfigurable components have been used to manipulate coherent light 5,6 and established fabrication processes are CMOS compatible. However, quantum control needs to include entangling operations to be relevant to QIPthis is recognised as one of the most challenging tasks for photonics because of the extra resources required for each entangling step 5,6 . Here, we demonstrate a programmable silicon photonics chip that generates two photonic qubits, on which it then performs arbitrary twoqubit untiary operations, including arbitrary entangling operations. This is achieved by using silicon photonics to reach the complexity required to implement an iteration of the linear combination of unitaries architecture 8,9 that we have adapted to realise universal two-qubit processing. The device's performance shows that the design and fabrication techniques used in its implementation work well with the linear combination architecture and can be used to realise larger and more powerful photonic quantum processors.Miniaturisation of quantum-photonic experiments into chip-scale waveguide circuits started 10 from the need to realise many-mode devices with inherent sub-wavelength stability for generalised quantum-interference experi-ments, such as multi-photon quantum walks 11 and boson sampling 12-14 . Universal six-mode linear optics implemented with a silica waveguide chip (coupled to free-space photon sources and fibre-coupled detectors) demonstrated the principle that single photonic devices can be configured to perform any given linear optics task 15 . Silicon waveguides promise even greater capability for large-scale photonic processing, because of their third order nonlinearity that enables photon pair generation within integ...

Entanglement-based quantum deep learning

“…When combining these parts, only two sequential two-photon gates are used, which is the state of the art in photon control [69]. Besides, three sequential two-photon gates can be realized equally by using hyperentanglement [70]. Although the quantum clone setup operates on two photons, one BS with two-photon interference is introduced which is simpler comparing with the two-photon gate [71].…”

Highly Efficient Silicon Photonic Microheater Based on Black Arsenic–Phosphorus

“…Owing to the complementary metal‐oxide semiconductor (CMOS) compatibility, silicon‐based photonic integrated circuits have shown huge potentials for optical interconnects in the power‐hungry high‐performance computers and data centers. Recently, growing efforts have been directed toward a series of emerging applications in field‐programmable gate arrays, artificial intelligence, quantum optics, optical processor, optical phased array, and so forth. Phase shifter is one of the fundamental building blocks for its diverse variety of functionalities including modulation, wavelength detuning, beam steering, etc.…”

Generation of quantum entangled states of multiple groups of qubits distributed in multiple cavities

“…Large-scale quantum information processing (QIP) has drawn much attention [1][2][3]. Usually, a large number of qubits may be involved in large-scale QIP.…”