Beyond Binary Quantum Information
We are happy to share that Mehul has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant by the European Research Council! The PIQUaNT project (Photonics for High-Dimensional Quantum Networking) will focus on technologies for the manipulation and control of structured light in space and time, with an emphasis on entanglement-based applications. We will soon be advertising PhD and postdoc positions for this project, so please keep an eye out. For more, please read the Heriot-Watt press release.
We are presenting five talks at Photon 2020, a biannual conference on photonics that is being held online this year. The registration is free for students, and we would be very happy if you tuned in! The talk schedule is as follows:
Tuesday, 11:30 AM
Saroch Leedumrongwatthanakun
Reconfigurable high-dimensional quantum gates using a multi-mode fiber
Tuesday, 2:45 PM
Vatshal Srivastav
Experimental Demonstration of High-Dimensional Steering
Tuesday, 3:00 PM
Will McCutcheon
Compressive Sensing of Dispersive Scrambling Channels
Wednesday, 3:45 PM
Mehul Malik
Unscrambling Entanglement through a Complex Medium
Thursday, 10:00 AM
Natalia Herrera Valencia
High-Dimensional Pixel Entanglement: Efficient Generation and Certification
In new work from our lab published in the journal Nature Physics, we demonstrate how high-dimensional entanglement can be transported through a complex medium consisting of a commercial multi-mode fibre supporting hundreds of spatial modes. This work was done in collaboration with Dr. Hugo Defienne from University of Glasgow.
In a quantum twist, the transmission matrix of the fibre was measured by mapping the entire matrix onto a single entangled state, which is an example of state-channel duality in quantum mechanics. Furthermore, the entanglement was regained without ever manipulating the fibre or the photon that entered it. Instead, we carefully scrambled the entangled partner that remained outside, allowing us to transport 6-dimensional entanglement through the fibre!
Popular media coverage: BBC News, Physics World, Physics Today, Heriot-Watt press release
N. H. Valencia, S. Goel, W. McCutcheon, H. Defienne, & M. Malik, Unscrambling Entanglement through a Complex Medium, Nature Physics (2020), doi: 10.1038/s41567-020-0970-1.
In a record-breaking result from our lab, we recently demonstrated the generation and certification of photonic high-dimensional entanglement with the highest quality, fastest measurement speed, largest dimensionality, and the most “entangled bits” of information till date!
We achieved this through several breakthroughs in theory and experiment, including a cleverly designed spatial-mode basis of macro-pixels and an efficient entanglement witness developed in collaboration with our colleagues in Austria and the Czech Republic. This result demonstrates that high-dimensional entanglement can indeed break out of the confines of an optical laboratory and enable practical, high-capacity quantum communication networks in the near future.
Preprint: N. H. Valencia, V. Srivastav, M. Pivoluska, M. Huber, N. Friis, W. McCutcheon, and M. Malik, “High-Dimensional Pixel Entanglement: Efficient Generation and Certification,” arXiv:2004.04994 (2020).
We are excited to welcome the newest member of our group, Dr. Saroch Leedumrongwatthanakun! Originally from Thailand, Saroch recently completed his PhD in the group of Prof. Sylvain Gigan at the Laboratoire Kastler Brossel (LKB) in Paris.
Saroch joins us at a crazy time for science, albeit the world, but it won’t be long before we can put his expertise in complex quantum photonics into action!
BBQ Lab 