A quantum-mechanical study of optical regenerators based on nonlinear-loop mirrors

We present a quantum-mechanical analysis of a nonlinear interferometer that achieves optical switching via cross-phase modulation resulting from the Kerr effect. We show how it performs as a very precise optical regenerator, highly improving the transmitted bit-error rate in the presence of loss.Comment: 420KB tar file, including 5 eps figures. To appear on IEEE Photonics Technology Letter

Scalable Recommendation with Poisson Factorization

We develop a Bayesian Poisson matrix factorization model for forming recommendations from sparse user behavior data. These data are large user/item matrices where each user has provided feedback on only a small subset of items, either explicitly (e.g., through star ratings) or implicitly (e.g., through views or purchases). In contrast to traditional matrix factorization approaches, Poisson factorization implicitly models each user's limited attention to consume items. Moreover, because of the mathematical form of the Poisson likelihood, the model needs only to explicitly consider the observed entries in the matrix, leading to both scalable computation and good predictive performance. We develop a variational inference algorithm for approximate posterior inference that scales up to massive data sets. This is an efficient algorithm that iterates over the observed entries and adjusts an approximate posterior over the user/item representations. We apply our method to large real-world user data containing users rating movies, users listening to songs, and users reading scientific papers. In all these settings, Bayesian Poisson factorization outperforms state-of-the-art matrix factorization methods

Antibunched Emission of Photon-Pairs via Quantum Zeno Blockade

We propose a new methodology, namely "quantum Zeno blockade," for managing light scattering at a few-photon level in general nonlinear-optical media, such as crystals, fibers, silicon microrings, and atomic vapors. Using this tool, antibunched emission of photon pairs can be achieved, leading to potent quantum-optics applications such as deterministic entanglement generation without the need for heralding. In a practical implementation using an on-chip toroidal microcavity immersed in rubidium vapor, we estimate that high-fidelity entangled photons can be produced on-demand at MHz rates or higher, corresponding to an improvement of $\gtrsim10^7$ times from the state-of-the-art.Comment: to appear in Phys. Rev. Let

Interaction-Free All-Optical Switching via Quantum-Zeno Effect

We propose a novel interaction-free scheme for all-optical switching which does not rely on the physical coupling between signal and control waves. The interaction-free nature of the scheme allows it to overcome the fundamental photon-loss limit imposed by the signal-pump coupling. The same phenomenon protects photonic-signal states from decoherence, making devices based on this scheme suitable for quantum applications. Focusing on $\chi^{(2)}$ waveguides, we provide device designs for traveling-wave and Fabry-Perot switches. In both designs, the performance is optimal when the signal switching is induced by coherent dynamical evolution. In contrast, when the switching is induced by a rapid dissipation channel, it is less efficient.Comment: 14 pages, 14 figures, submitted to Physical Review

Heralding Single Photons Without Spectral Factorability

Recent efforts to produce single photons via heralding have relied on creating spectrally factorable two-photon states in order to achieve both high purity and high production rate. Through a careful multimode analysis, we find, however, that spectral factorability is not necessary. Utilizing single-mode detection, a similar or better performance can be achieved with non-factorable states. This conclusion rides on the fact that even when using a broadband filter, a single-mode measurement can still be realized, as long as the coherence time of the triggering photons exceeds the measurement window of the on/off detector.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure

Spinning flavour branes and fermion pairing instabilities

We consider probe Dp-branes, p=3,5,7, in global AdS_5 x S^5, rotating along an internal direction in the S^5. These are dual to strongly interacting N=4 SYM on S^3 with massless fundamental flavours, in the presence of an R-symmetry chemical potential for flavour fermions. For massless, "AdS-filling" Dp-brane embeddings at zero temperature, we find an infinite set of threshold values of the chemical potential at which instabilities are triggered. The onset of instability is always preceded by metastability of the zero density state. From the onset values of the chemical potential, we infer that unstable directions favour a homogeneous condensate of a bilinear made from fermion harmonics, or Cooper pairing. We confirm this picture both numerically and analytically. The linearized analysis showing the appearance of instabilities involves a charged scalar in global AdS space coupled to a (large) constant background gauge potential. The resulting frequency space correlator of the fermion bilinear at strong coupling displays poles in the upper half plane. In contrast, the correlator at zero coupling exhibits Pauli blocking due to occupation of states below the Fermi level, but no instabilities. The end-point of the strong coupling instability is not visible in our setup.Comment: 44 pages, 10 figures, uses late

Thermal N = 4 SYM theory as a 2D Coulomb gas

We consider N = 4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory with SU(N) gauge group at large N and at finite temperature on a spatial S^3. We show that, at finite weak 't Hooft coupling, the theory is naturally described as a two dimensional Coulomb gas of complex eigenvalues of the Polyakov-Maldacena loop, valued on the cylinder. In the low temperature confined phase the eigenvalues condense onto a strip encircling the cylinder, while the high temperature deconfined phase is characterised by an ellipsoidal droplet of eigenvalues.Comment: 1+10 pages. 2 figure

All-optical switching of photonic entanglement

Future quantum optical networks will require the ability to route entangled photons at high speeds, with minimal loss and added in-band noise, and---most importantly---without disturbing the photons' quantum state. Here we present an all-optical switch which fulfills these requirements and characterize its performance at the single photon level. It exhibits a 200-ps switching window, 120:1 contrast, 1.5-dB loss, and induces no measurable degradation in the switched photons' entangled-state fidelity (< 0.002). As a proof-of-principle demonstration of its capability, we use the switch to demultiplex a single quantum channel from a dual-channel, time-division-multiplexed entangled photon stream. Furthermore, because this type of switch couples the temporal and spatial degrees of freedom, it provides an important new tool with which to encode multiple-qubit quantum states on a single photon