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A non-unitary metasurface enables continuous control of quantum photon–photon interactions from bosonic to fermionic

Nature Photonics volume 15, pages 267–271 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Photonic quantum information processing, one of the leading platforms for quantum technologies1,2,3,4,5, critically relies on optical quantum interference to produce an indispensable effective photon–photon interaction. However, such an effective interaction is fundamentally limited to bunching6 due to the bosonic nature of photons7 and the restricted phase response from conventional unitary optical elements8,9. Here we propose and experimentally demonstrate a new degree of freedom in the optical quantum interference enabled by a non-unitary metasurface. Due to the unique anisotropic phase response that creates two extreme eigen-operations, we show dynamical and continuous control over the effective interaction of two single photons such that they show bosonic bunching, fermionic antibunching or arbitrarily intermediate behaviour, beyond their intrinsic bosonic nature. This quantum operation opens the door to both fundamental quantum light–matter interaction and innovative photonic quantum devices for quantum communication, quantum simulation and quantum computing.

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Fig. 1: Introduction of a new DOF in optical quantum interference by a non-unitary metasurface.
Fig. 2: Experimental realization of the new DOF in the QTPI.
Fig. 3: The generalized QTPI for independent photon polarizations.

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Data availability

The data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank B. Whaley and H. Haffner for reading of the manuscript and valuable comments. Q.L. also thanks Coherent for loaning the Genesis CX355-250 laser used in the experiments. This work is supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology Office of Sponsored Research (OSR) (award OSR-2016-CRG5-2950-03). We acknowledge the facility support at the Biomolecular Nanotechnology Center/QB3 at UC Berkeley. We also acknowledge the facility support at the Molecular Foundry. Work at the Molecular Foundry was supported by the Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Quanwei Li, Wei Bao.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center (NSEC), University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Quanwei Li, Wei Bao, Zhaoyu Nie, Yang Xia, Yahui Xue, Yuan Wang, Sui Yang & Xiang Zhang

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Contributions

Q.L., W.B. and X.Z. conceived the idea and initiated the project. Q.L. formulated the theories. Q.L. and W.B. designed the metasurface. Z.N., W.B. and Q.L. fabricated the metasurface with assistance from Y. Xia and Y. Xue. Q.L. designed and built the setup and performed all measurements. Q.L., W.B. and X.Z. analysed the data. Q.L., W.B. and X.Z. wrote the manuscript with assistance from all authors. X.Z., S.Y. and Y.W. supervised the project.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Xiang Zhang.

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Peer review information Nature Photonics thanks Mark Brongersma, Jianwei Wang and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. S1–S13, Tables S1 and S2 and Notes 1–10.

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Li, Q., Bao, W., Nie, Z. et al. A non-unitary metasurface enables continuous control of quantum photon–photon interactions from bosonic to fermionic. Nat. Photonics 15, 267–271 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-021-00762-6

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