Non-Abelian anyonic interferometry with a multi-photon spin lattice simulator

TL;DR

This paper proposes a linear optics-based scheme to simulate non-Abelian anyons using single photons, joint qutrit-qubit encoding, and specific optical components, extending previous Abelian anyon simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method for simulating non-Abelian anyons with linear optics and single photons, utilizing joint qutrit-qubit encoding and specific optical resources.

Findings

Scheme successfully encodes non-Abelian anyons

Uses three pairs of parametric down converted photons

Requires 14 beam splitters for implementation

Abstract

Recently a pair of experiments demonstrated a simulation of Abelian anyons in a spin network of single photons. The experiments were based on an Abelian discrete gauge theory spin lattice model of Kitaev. Here we describe how to use linear optics and single photons to simulate non-Abelian anyons. The scheme makes use of joint qutrit-qubit encoding of the spins and the resources required are three pairs of parametric down converted photons and 14 beam splitters.