Large-scale silicon quantum photonics implementing arbitrary two-qubit processing

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a fully programmable two-qubit quantum processor using silicon photonics, capable of implementing a wide range of quantum operations with high fidelity, advancing integrated photonic quantum computing.

Contribution

It introduces a scalable silicon photonic platform with integrated sources, filters, beam splitters, and phase shifters for arbitrary two-qubit processing, fabricated via CMOS technology.

Findings

Achieved average quantum process fidelity of 93.2%.

Implemented 98 two-qubit unitaries and quantum algorithms.

Demonstrated efficient simulation of quantum walks.

Abstract

Integrated optics is an engineering solution proposed for exquisite control of photonic quantum information. Here we use silicon photonics and the linear combination of quantum operators scheme to realise a fully programmable two-qubit quantum processor. The device is fabricated with readily available CMOS based processing and comprises four nonlinear photon-sources, four filters, eighty-two beam splitters and fifty-eight individually addressable phase shifters. To demonstrate performance, we programmed the device to implement ninety-eight various two-qubit unitary operations (with average quantum process fidelity of 93.2$\pm$4.5%), a two-qubit quantum approximate optimization algorithm and efficient simulation of Szegedy directed quantum walks. This fosters further use of the linear combination architecture with silicon photonics for future photonic quantum processors.