Joint entanglement of topology and polarization enables error-protected quantum registers

Linear-optical systems can implement photonic quantum walks that simulate systems with nontrivial topological properties. Here, such photonic walks are used to jointly entangle polarization and winding number. This joint entanglement allows information processing tasks to be performed with interacti...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:New Journal of Physics
Main Authors: David S Simon, Shuto Osawa, Alexander V Sergienko
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IOP Publishing 2018-01-01
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/aae19f
Description
Summary:Linear-optical systems can implement photonic quantum walks that simulate systems with nontrivial topological properties. Here, such photonic walks are used to jointly entangle polarization and winding number. This joint entanglement allows information processing tasks to be performed with interactive access to a wide variety of topological features. Topological considerations are used to suppress errors, with polarization allowing easy measurement and manipulation of qubits. We provide three examples of this approach: production of two-photon systems with entangled winding number (including topological analogs of Bell states), a topologically error-protected optical memory register, and production of entangled topologically-protected boundary states. In particular it is shown that a pair of quantum memory registers, entangled in polarization and winding number, with topologically-assisted error suppression can be made with qubits stored in superpositions of winding numbers; as a result, information processing with winding number-based qubits is a viable possibility.
ISSN:1367-2630