Quantum circuits with many photons on a programmable nanophotonic chip

Published

April 19, 2021

Author(s)

Adriana Lita, Sae Woo Nam, Thomas Gerrits, J. M. Arrazola, V. Bergholm, K Bradler, T R. Bromley, M J. Collins, I Dhand, A Fumagalli, A Goussev, L G. Helt, J Hundal, T Isacsson, R B. Israel, N Quesada, V D. Vaidya, Z Vernon, Y Zhang

Abstract

Growing interest in quantum computing for practical applications has led to a surge in the availability of programmable machines for loading and executing quantum algorithms. Photonic quantum computers have been limited either to non-deterministic operation, low photon numbers and rates, or fixed random gate sequences. Here we introduce a device for executing many-photon quantum circuits using integrated nanophotonics: a programmable chip, operating at room temperature and interfaced with a fully automated control system. It enables remote users to execute quantum algorithms requiring up to eight modes of strongly squeezed vacuum initialized as two-mode squeezed states in single temporal modes, a fully general and programmable four-mode interferometer, and genuine photon number-resolving readout on all outputs. Multi-photon detection events with photon numbers and rates exceeding any previous quantum optical demonstration are made possible by strong squeezing and high sampling rates. We verify the non-classicality of the device output, and use the platform to demonstrate the execution of three quantum algorithms: Gaussian boson sampling, molecular vibronic spectra, and graph similarity.

Citation

Nature

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

quantum computing, quantum algorithms, integrated nanophotonics, photon number-resolving detectors, Gaussian boson sampling.

Citation

Lita, A. , Nam, S. , Gerrits, T. , Arrazola, J. , Bergholm, V. , Bradler, K. , Bromley, T. , Collins, M. , Dhand, I. , Fumagalli, A. , Goussev, A. , Helt, L. , Hundal, J. , Isacsson, T. , Israel, R. , Quesada, N. , Vaidya, V. , Vernon, Z. and Zhang, Y. (2021), Quantum circuits with many photons on a programmable nanophotonic chip, Nature, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=930439 (Accessed October 9, 2025)