Single photons and quantum effects articles within Nature Physics

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  • News & Views |

    Even by shining classical light on a single opening, one can perform a double-slit experiment and discover a surprising variety of quantum mechanical multi-photon correlations — thanks to surface plasmon polaritons and photon-number-resolving detectors.

    • Martijn Wubs

  • Article |

    Most applications of surface plasmons are based on their near-field properties. These properties are now shown to be governed by nonclassical scattering between multiparticle plasmonic subsystems.

    • Mingyuan Hong
    • , Riley B. Dawkins
    •  & Omar S. Magaña-Loaiza

  • Article
    | Open Access

    External driving of qubits can exploit their nonlinearity to generate different forms of interqubit interactions, broadening the capabilities of the platform.

    • Long B. Nguyen
    • , Yosep Kim
    •  & Irfan Siddiqi

  • Article |

    Many quantum devices operate in the microwave regime, but long-distance communication relies on optical photons. A nanomechanical resonator can be used to create entangled optical and microwave photons linking the two frequency regimes.

    • Wentao Jiang
    • , Felix M. Mayor
    •  & Amir H. Safavi-Naeini

  • Research Briefing |

    A coherent interface between a mechanical oscillator and superconducting electrical circuits would enable the control of quantum states of mechanical motion, but such interfaces often result in excess mechanical energy loss. A new material-agnostic approach is shown to achieve strong electromechanical coupling while preserving a long phonon lifetime.

  • News & Views |

    Levitated nanoparticles can now be cooled to the motional ground state in two dimensions. This advance could enable a new generation of macroscopic quantum experiments.

    • Dalziel J. Wilson

  • Research Briefing |

    Photon bound states are quantum states of light that emerge in systems with ultrahigh optical non-linearities. A single artificial atom was used to study the dynamics of these states, revealing that the number of photons within the pulse determines the time delay after the pulse scatters off the atom.

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Measurements on a single artificial atom—a quantum dot—coupled to an optical cavity show scattering dynamics that depend on the number of photons involved in the light–matter interaction, which is a signature of stimulated emission.

    • Natasha Tomm
    • , Sahand Mahmoodian
    •  & Richard J. Warburton

  • News & Views |

    ‘Squeezing’ of light can be used to alter the distribution of quantum noise to benefit quantum sensing and other applications. An improved design for a microwave photon squeezer provides high performance over a large bandwidth.

    • Baleegh Abdo

  • News & Views |

    The emission of light from qubits in a superconducting circuit can be controlled in order to choose the direction of the photons’ propagation, which could be used to route information in quantum networks.

    • Simone Gasparinetti

  • Article |

    Generalized measurements that do not correspond to conventional basis projections of the quantum wavefunction are a part of several important protocols in quantum information. These measurements can be certifiably performed on higher-dimensional systems using optical fibre technology.

    • Daniel Martínez
    • , Esteban S. Gómez
    •  & Gustavo Lima

  • News & Views |

    A clever experiment with a photonic circuit has realized three-dimensional non-Abelian quantum behaviour — introducing an experimental testbed for field and gauge theories.

    • Andrew G. White

  • Perspective |

    It is not immediately obvious whether photons retain the information they carry when they traverse a disordered or multimodal medium. This Perspective discusses the extent to which the quantum properties of light can be preserved and controlled.

    • Ohad Lib
    •  & Yaron Bromberg

  • News & Views |

    All-optical devices hold promise as a platform for ultralow-power, sub-nanosecond photonic classical and quantum information processing. Measurements of the dynamics of a single photon switch unveil the quantum correlations at the root of its operation.

    • Victoria A. Norman
    •  & Marina Radulaski

  • Letter |

    Efficient interactions between two photons is a challenging requirement for quantum information processing. A quantum dot coupled to a waveguide produces strong interactions that can induce photon correlations and reshape two-photon wavepackets.

    • Hanna Le Jeannic
    • , Alexey Tiranov
    •  & Peter Lodahl

  • Letter |

    Edge modes in chiral topological systems can carry quantum information without backscattering. A topological lattice of superconducting resonators has been coupled to a qubit, providing a platform for chiral quantum electrodynamics and communication.

    • John Clai Owens
    • , Margaret G. Panetta
    •  & David I. Schuster

  • Letter |

    A method to engineer higher-order interactions between photons provides a route to create non-classical and entangled states across multiple modes.

    • Srivatsan Chakram
    • , Kevin He
    •  & David I. Schuster

  • News & Views |

    Nonlinear optical effects enable sophisticated functionalities to generate and manipulate light. The precise control of two distinct nonlinear phenomena in a photonic chip can enhance a key optical nonlinearity that makes single-photon sources more efficient.

    • Thiago P. Mayer Alegre
    •  & Gustavo S. Wiederhecker

  • News & Views |

    Solid-state sources of entangled photons with tailored properties are key elements for integrated quantum computing. Refractive-index perturbations propagating faster than the speed of light may offer a practical approach for generating entangled photon pairs.

    • Nahid Talebi

  • Article |

    Despite their relevance for quantum technology, photon-pair sources are difficult to control. A theoretical proposal shows how photon pairs can be created from vacuum fluctuations in time-dependent systems, potentially enabling heralded single-photon frequency combs.

    • Jamison Sloan
    • , Nicholas Rivera
    •  & Marin Soljačić

  • Review Article |

    Interaction with light can be used to precisely control motional states. This Review surveys recent progress in the preparation of non-classical mechanical states and in the application of optomechanical platforms to specific tasks in quantum technology.

    • Shabir Barzanjeh
    • , André Xuereb
    •  & Eva M. Weig

  • Article |

    Entangled photon states can be used to make quantum information more robust. A photonic experimental implementation with eight qubits shows that error-protection schemes can increase the success rate of running a quantum algorithm.

    • Caterina Vigliar
    • , Stefano Paesani
    •  & Anthony Laing

  • News & Views |

    Two experiments using entangled photons have successfully generated more randomness than consumed — at a level of security that is all but certain. They did so by exploiting non-locality, one of the most counterintuitive aspects of quantum mechanics.

    • Paul Skrzypczyk

  • News & Views |

    Among the many reasons a signal may deviate from perfect periodicity, quantum-limited jitter is arguably the most fundamental. A clever experiment has now stripped away technical noise to unveil quantum-limited jitter of ultrafast soliton frequency combs.

    • Miro Erkintalo

  • Letter |

    The coherence of a close-to-ideal laser beam can be quadratically better than what was believed to be the quantum limit. This new Heisenberg limit could be attained with circuit quantum electrodynamics.

    • Travis J. Baker
    • , Seyed N. Saadatmand
    •  & Howard M. Wiseman

  • News & Views |

    Squeezed light is useful for metrology and quantum information. An optomechanical squeezed light source that works at room temperature will facilitate the technological applications of quantum light.

    • André Xuereb

  • Article |

    When interfacing a graphene layer with a thin solid emitter, the quantum plasmonic vacuum allows each solid electron to access all unoccupied valence states through the nonlocality of their light-matter interaction, creating ultra-strong coupling alongside mass and bandgap renormalization.

    • Yaniv Kurman
    •  & Ido Kaminer

  • Letter |

    A passive, heralded and high-fidelity quantum memory network node has been realized, which connects simultaneously to two quantum channels provided by orthogonally aligned optical fibre cavities coupled with a single atom.

    • Manuel Brekenfeld
    • , Dominik Niemietz
    •  & Gerhard Rempe

  • Perspective |

    This article puts in perspective the relationship between cavity and circuit quantum electrodynamics, two related approaches for studying the fundamental quantum interaction between light and matter.

    • S. Haroche
    • , M. Brune
    •  & J. M. Raimond

  • Review Article |

    Hybrid quantum systems combine heterogeneous physical systems for the implementation of new functionalities at the quantum level. This article reviews recent research on the creation of hybrid quantum systems within the circuit quantum electrodynamics framework.

    • A. A. Clerk
    • , K. W. Lehnert
    •  & Y. Nakamura

  • Article |

    A flux-tunable inductive coupling between two microwave superconducting resonators allows the operation of one of them as a two-level system. The lifetime is limited by the oscillator’s quality factor, offering potential for highly coherent qubits.

    • Andrei Vrajitoarea
    • , Ziwen Huang
    •  & Andrew A. Houck

  • Article |

    Vacuum fluctuations in the vicinity of nanophotonic structures can lead to the conversion of a free electron into a polariton and a high-energy photon, whose frequency can be controlled by the electromagnetic properties of the nanostructure.

    • Nicholas Rivera
    • , Liang Jie Wong
    •  & Ido Kaminer

  • News & Views |

    Two-level quantum systems are routinely excited by resonant pump beams. Experiments now show resonant excitation through dichromatic, detuned pumps — providing a coherent control technique that will also aid single-photon emission from solid-state devices.

    • Glenn S. Solomon

  • News & Views |

    Photonic circuits naturally implement boson sampling, a quantum algorithm that is classically hard to solve. Four photon pairs produced and processed within a single silicon chip have now been used to run it, a step towards besting classical computers.

    • Robert Keil

  • Letter |

    Experiments report the generation and manipulation of eight photons on a silicon chip. Integrating linear and nonlinear photonic circuitry, three different boson sampling approaches are implemented and used to compute molecular vibronic spectra.

    • Stefano Paesani
    • , Yunhong Ding
    •  & Anthony Laing

  • Article |

    A general theoretical picture regarding the generation and the detection of extremely short pulses of squeezed vacuum light is provided, allowing the treatment of arbitrary wavepackets of quantum light intrinsically in the time domain.

    • Matthias Kizmann
    • , Thiago Lucena de M. Guedes
    •  & Guido Burkard

  • Letter |

    A Josephson junction array is used to show the phase mode associated with superconductivity surviving deep in the insulating regime at high frequency. This generates a device with an effective fine structure constant larger than unity.

    • R. Kuzmin
    • , R. Mencia
    •  & V. E. Manucharyan

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