1,129 research outputs found
Extracting joint weak values with local, single-particle measurements
Weak measurement is a new technique which allows one to describe the
evolution of postselected quantum systems. It appears to be useful for
resolving a variety of thorny quantum paradoxes, particularly when used to
study properties of pairs of particles. Unfortunately, such nonlocal or joint
observables often prove difficult to measure weakly in practice (for instance,
in optics -- a common testing ground for this technique -- strong photon-photon
interactions would be needed). Here we derive a general, experimentally
feasible, method for extracting these values from correlations between
single-particle observables.Comment: 6 page
Nonlinear optics with less than one photon
We demonstrate suppression and enhancement of spontaneous parametric down-
conversion via quantum interference with two weak fields from a local
oscillator (LO). Pairs of LO photons are observed to upconvert with high
efficiency for appropriate phase settings, exhibiting an effective nonlinearity
enhanced by at least 10 orders of magnitude. This constitutes a two-photon
switch, and promises to be useful for a variety of nonlinear optical effects at
the quantum level.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure
Efficient Toffoli Gates Using Qudits
The simplest decomposition of a Toffoli gate acting on three qubits requires
{\em five} 2-qubit gates. If we restrict ourselves to controlled-sign (or
controlled-NOT) gates this number climbs to six. We show that the number of
controlled-sign gates required to implement a Toffoli gate can be reduced to
just {\em three} if one of the three quantum systems has a third state that is
accessible during the computation, i.e. is actually a qutrit. Such a
requirement is not unreasonable or even atypical since we often artificially
enforce a qubit structure on multilevel quantums systems (eg. atoms, photonic
polarization and spatial modes). We explore the implementation of these
techniques in optical quantum processing and show that linear optical circuits
could operate with much higher probabilities of success
Time-reversal and super-resolving phase measurements
We demonstrate phase super-resolution in the absence of entangled states. The
key insight is to use the inherent time-reversal symmetry of quantum mechanics:
our theory shows that it is possible to \emph{measure}, as opposed to prepare,
entangled states. Our approach is robust, requiring only photons that exhibit
classical interference: we experimentally demonstrate high-visibility phase
super-resolution with three, four, and six photons using a standard laser and
photon counters. Our six-photon experiment demonstrates the best phase
super-resolution yet reported with high visibility and resolution.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
Full characterization of a three-photon GHZ state using quantum state tomography
We have performed the first experimental tomographic reconstruction of a
three-photon polarization state. Quantum state tomography is a powerful tool
for fully describing the density matrix of a quantum system. We measured 64
three-photon polarization correlations and used a "maximum-likelihood"
reconstruction method to reconstruct the GHZ state. The entanglement class has
been characterized using an entanglement witness operator and the maximum
predicted values for the Mermin inequality was extracted.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figure
Manipulating biphotonic qutrits
Quantum information carriers with higher dimension than the canonical qubit
offer significant advantages. However, manipulating such systems is extremely
difficult. We show how measurement induced non-linearities can be employed to
dramatically extend the range of possible transforms on biphotonic qutrits; the
three level quantum systems formed by the polarisation of two photons in the
same spatio-temporal mode. We fully characterise the biphoton-photon
entanglement that underpins our technique, thereby realising the first instance
of qubit-qutrit entanglement. We discuss an extension of our technique to
generate qutrit-qutrit entanglement and to manipulate any bosonic encoding of
quantum information.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Violation of Bell's Inequality with Photons from Independent Sources
We report a violation of Bell's inequality using one photon from a parametric
down-conversion source and a second photon from an attenuated laser beam. The
two photons were entangled at a beam splitter using the post-selection
technique of Shih and Alley [Phys. Rev. Lett. 61, 2921 (1988)]. A quantum
interference pattern with a visibility of 91% was obtained using the photons
from these independent sources, as compared with a visibility of 99.4% using
two photons from a central parametric down-conversion source.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures; minor change
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