Efficient recycling strategies for preparing large Fock states from single-photon sources --- Applications to quantum metrology

TL;DR

This paper introduces a recycling-based method for efficiently preparing large photon-number Fock states from single-photon sources, significantly improving the rate of state generation for quantum metrology applications.

Contribution

The authors propose a bootstrapped, recycling approach that exponentially enhances the rate of large Fock state preparation compared to traditional methods.

Findings

Recycling improves preparation rate exponentially.

The scheme enables efficient large Fock state generation.

Applicable to quantum metrology with enhanced precision.

Abstract

Fock states are a fundamental resource for many quantum technologies such as quantum metrology. While much progress has been made in single-photon source technologies, preparing Fock states with large photon number remains challenging. We present and analyze a bootstrapped approach for non-deterministically preparing large photon-number Fock states by iteratively fusing smaller Fock states on a beamsplitter. We show that by employing state recycling we are able to exponentially improve the preparation rate over conventional schemes, allowing the efficient preparation of large Fock states. The scheme requires single-photon sources, beamsplitters, number-resolved photo-detectors, fast-feedforward, and an optical quantum memory.