Quantum Simulation with Interacting Photons

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent advances in using strongly interacting photons in extended networks for quantum simulation, highlighting progress in optical and microwave systems where photon interactions surpass dissipation.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the theoretical and experimental developments in quantum simulation with interacting photons across various platforms.

Findings

Strong photon-photon interactions enable quantum simulation in extended networks.

Recent technological progress has made practical implementations feasible.

Both optical and microwave photon systems are promising platforms for quantum simulation.

Abstract

Enhancing optical nonlinearities so that they become appreciable on the single photon level and lead to nonclassical light fields has been a central objective in quantum optics for many years. After this has been achieved in individual micro-cavities representing an effectively zero-dimensional volume, this line of research has shifted its focus towards engineering devices where such strong optical nonlinearities simultaneously occur in extended volumes of multiple nodes of a network. Recent technological progress in several experimental platforms now opens the possibility to employ the systems of strongly interacting photons these give rise to as quantum simulators. Here we review the recent development and current status of this research direction for theory and experiment. Addressing both, optical photons interacting with atoms and microwave photons in networks of superconducting circuits, we focus on analogue quantum simulations in scenarios where effective photon-photon interactions exceed dissipative processes in the considered platforms.