Arbitrary coherent distributions in a programmable quantum walk

The coherent superposition of position states in a quantum walk (QW) can be precisely engineered towards the desired distributions to meet the need of quantum information applications. The coherent distribution can make full use of quantum parallel in computation and simulation. Particularly, the un...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Rong Zhang, Ran Yang, Jian Guo, Chang-Wei Sun, Yi-Chen Liu, Heng Zhou, Ping Xu, Zhenda Xie, Yan-Xiao Gong, Shi-Ning Zhu
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: American Physical Society 2022-04-01
Series:Physical Review Research
Online Access:http://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.4.023042
Description
Summary:The coherent superposition of position states in a quantum walk (QW) can be precisely engineered towards the desired distributions to meet the need of quantum information applications. The coherent distribution can make full use of quantum parallel in computation and simulation. Particularly, the uniform superposition provides the robust nonlocality, which has wide applications such as the generation of genuine multibit random numbers without postprocessing. We experimentally demonstrate that the rich dynamics featured with arbitrary coherent distributions can be obtained by introducing different sets of the time- and position-dependent operations. Such a QW is realized by a resource-constant and flexible optical circuit, in which the variable operation is executed based on a Sagnac interferometer in an intrinsically stable and precisely controlled way. Our results contribute to the practical realization of quantum-walk-based quantum computation, quantum simulations, and quantum information protocols.
ISSN:2643-1564