Engineering qubit dynamics in open systems with photonic synthetic lattices

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a method to engineer and simulate arbitrary noise processes on single qubits using photonic synthetic lattices and metasurfaces, enabling precise control of qubit-environment interactions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel mapping between global unitary dynamics and quantum operations, allowing implementation of arbitrary noise on qubits with minimal optical components.

Findings

Successfully simulated phase errors and depolarization.

Implemented arbitrary noise operations with three metasurfaces.

Validated the approach experimentally with high fidelity.

Abstract

The evolution of a quantum system interacting with an environment can be described as a unitary process acting on both the system and the environment. In this framework, the system's evolution can be predicted by tracing out the environmental degrees of freedom. Here, we establish a precise mapping between the global unitary dynamics and the quantum operation involving the system, wherein the system is a single qubit, and the environment is modeled as a discrete lattice space. This approach enables the implementation of arbitrary noise operations on single-polarization qubits using a minimal set of three liquid-crystal metasurfaces, whose transverse distribution of the optic axes can be patterned to reproduce the target process. We experimentally validate this method by simulating common noise processes, such as phase errors and depolarization.