Single-Photon Three-Qubit Quantum Logic Using Spatial Light Modulators

Abstract

The information-carrying capacity of a single photon can be vastly expanded by exploiting its multiple degrees of freedom: spatial, temporal, and polarization. Although multiple qubits can be encoded per photon, to date only two-qubit single-photon quantum operations have been realized. Here, we report an experimental demonstration of three-qubit single-photon, linear, deterministic quantum gates that exploit photon polarization and the two-dimensional spatial-parity-symmetry of the transverse single-photon field. These gates are implemented using a polarization-sensitive spatial light modulator that provides a robust, non-interferometric, versatile platform for implementing controlled unitary gates. Polarization here represents the control qubit for either separable or entangling unitary operations on the two spatial-parity target qubits. Such gates help generate maximally entangled three-qubit Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger and W states, which is confirmed by tomographical reconstruction of single-photon density matrices. This strategy provides access to a wide range of three-qubit states and operations for use in few-qubit quantum information processing protocols.

Publication Date

12-1-2017

Publication Title

Nature Communications

Volume

8

Issue

1

Document Type

Article

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-00580-x

Socpus ID

85030314335 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/85030314335

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