Quantum state fusion in photons

TL;DR

This paper introduces and experimentally demonstrates quantum state fusion, a process that combines two photons' qubits into one photon within a higher-dimensional space, with potential applications in quantum communication.

Contribution

It proposes and experimentally verifies the process of quantum state fusion and its inverse, enabling manipulation of quantum information across multiple photons and degrees of freedom.

Findings

Successfully demonstrated quantum state fusion experimentally.

Showed the inverse process of splitting a high-dimensional photon state into two qubits.

Potential to enhance quantum communication protocols.

Abstract

Photons are the ideal carriers of quantum information for communication. Each photon can have a single qubit or even multiple qubits encoded in its internal quantum state, as defined by optical degrees of freedom such as polarization, wavelength, transverse modes, etc. Here, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a physical process, named "quantum state fusion", in which the two-dimensional quantum states (qubits) of two input photons are combined into a single output photon, within a four-dimensional quantum space. The inverse process is also proposed, in which the four-dimensional quantum state of a single photon is split into two photons, each carrying a qubit. Both processes can be iterated, and hence may be used to bridge multi-particle protocols of quantum information with the multi-degree-of-freedom ones, with possible applications in quantum communication networks.