Alessia Suprano

Accurately estimating properties of quantum states, such as entanglement, while essential for the development of quantum technologies, remains a challenging task. Standard approaches to property estimation rely on detailed modeling of the measurement apparatus and a priori assumptions on their working principles. Even small deviations can greatly affect reconstruction accuracy and prediction reliability. Here, we demonstrate that quantum reservoir computing embodies a powerful alternative for witnessing quantum entanglement and, more generally, estimating quantum features from experimental data. We leverage the orbital angular momentum of photon pairs as an ancillary degree of freedom to enable informationally complete single-setting measurements of their polarization. Our approach does not require fine-tuning or refined knowledge of the setup, at the same time outperforming conventional approaches. It automatically adapts to noise and imperfections while avoiding overfitting, ensuring robust reconstruction of entanglement witnesses and paving the way to the assessment of quantum features of experimental multiparty states.

Quantum Ghost Imaging (QGI) is a powerful imaging technique that enables probing of an object using illumination levels beyond classical limits and does not rely on a single-photon-sensitive camera in the spectrum of interest. Current “heralded” QGI setups provide high-resolution images with intensified charge-coupled device (ICCD) cameras, but their acquisition time and applicability are limited by setup complexity and detector dead time. Recently, new setups using single photon detection and time-tagging have been shown to allow more efficient acquisition while also enabling new applications, such as remote 3D imaging using “asynchronous” QGI. Here, we demonstrate novel results of two asynchronous QGI setups, using a dedicated high duty-cycle single photon avalanche diode array to drastically reduce acquisition time to sub-second regime, demonstrating video acquisition at 10 fps. As this scheme allows interoperability with arbitrary single photon timing detectors, it can be adapted to a variety of applications and is not bound by the detection window of silicon-based detectors. We further study the impact of the choice of bucket detector and pump laser, using readily available off-the-shelf detectors and lasers. Summarizing the findings, we discuss the remaining limitations for real-time imaging and give an outlook on upcoming developments and an outline of further applications of both detectors and detection scheme.

Multiphoton indistinguishability is a central resource for quantum enhancement in sensing and computation. Developing and certifying large-scale photonic devices requires reliable and accurate characterization of this resource, preferably using methods that are robust against experimental errors. Here, we propose a set of methods for the characterization of multiphoton indistinguishability, based on measurements of bunching and photon-number variance. Our methods are robust in a semi-device-independent way, in the sense of being effective even when the interferometers are incorrectly dialed. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach using an advanced photonic platform comprising a quantum dot single-photon source and a universal fully programmable integrated photonic processor. Our results show the practical usefulness of our methods, providing robust certification tools that can be scaled up to larger systems. Published by the American Physical Society 2025

The implementation of large-scale universal quantum computation represents a challenging and ambitious task on the road to quantum processing of information. In recent years, an intermediate approach has been pursued to demonstrate quantum computational advantage via non-universal computational models. A relevant example for photonic platforms has been provided by the Boson Sampling paradigm and its variants, which are known to be computationally hard while requiring at the same time only the manipulation of the generated photonic resources via linear optics and detection. Beside quantum computational advantage demonstrations, a promising direction towards possibly useful applications can be found in the field of quantum machine learning, considering the currently almost unexplored intermediate scenario between non-adaptive linear optics and universal photonic quantum computation. Here, we report the experimental implementation of quantum machine learning protocols by adding adaptivity via post-selection to a Boson Sampling platform based on universal programmable photonic circuits fabricated via femtosecond laser writing. Our experimental results demonstrate that Adaptive Boson Sampling is a viable route towards dimension-enhanced quantum machine learning with linear optical devices.

A Bernoulli factory is a randomness manipulation routine that takes as input a Bernoulli random variable, outputting another Bernoulli variable whose bias is a function of the input bias. Recently proposed quantum-to-quantum Bernoulli factory schemes encode both input and output variables in qubit amplitudes. This primitive could be used as a subroutine for more complex quantum algorithms involving Bayesian inference and Monte Carlo methods. Here, we report an experimental implementation of a polarization-encoded photonic quantum-to-quantum Bernoulli factory. We present and test three interferometric setups implementing the basic operations of an algebraic field (inversion, multiplication, and addition), which, chained together, allow for the implementation of a generic quantum-to-quantum Bernoulli factory. These in-bulk schemes are validated using a quantum dot–based single-photon source featuring high brightness and indistinguishability, paired with a time-to-spatial demultiplexing setup to prepare input resources of up to three single-photon states.

Recent developments have led to the possibility of embedding machine learning tools into experimental platforms to address key problems, including the characterization of the properties of quantum states. Leveraging on this, we implement a quantum extreme learning machine in a photonic platform to achieve resource-efficient and accurate characterization of the polarization state of a photon. The underlying reservoir dynamics through which such input state evolves is implemented using the coined quantum walk of high-dimensional photonic orbital angular momentum and performing projective measurements over a fixed basis. We demonstrate how the reconstruction of an unknown polarization state does not need a careful characterization of the measurement apparatus and is robust to experimental imperfections, thus representing a promising route for resource-economic state characterization.

The orbital angular momentum (OAM) of light is an infinite-dimensional degree of freedom of light with several applications in both classical and quantum optics. However, to fully take advantage of the potential of OAM states, reliable detection platforms to characterize generated states in experimental conditions are needed. Here, we present an approach to reconstruct input OAM states from measurements of the spatial intensity distributions they produce. To obviate issues arising from intrinsic symmetry of Laguerre-Gauss modes, we employ a pair of intensity profiles per state projecting it only on two distinct bases, showing how this allows to uniquely recover input states from the collected data. Our approach is based on a combined application of dimensionality reduction via principal component analysis, and linear regression, and thus has a low computational cost during both training and testing stages. We showcase our approach in a real photonic setup, generating up-to-four-dimensional OAM states through quantum walk dynamics. The high performance and versatility of the demonstrated approach make it an ideal tool to characterize high-dimensional states in quantum information protocols.

Engineering single-photon states endowed with Orbital Angular Momentum (OAM) is a powerful tool for quantum information photonic implementations. Indeed, thanks to its unbounded nature, OAM is suitable to encode qudits allowing a single carrier to transport a large amount of information. Nowadays, most of the experimental platforms use nonlinear crystals to generate single photons through Spontaneous Parametric Down Conversion processes, even if this kind of approach is intrinsically probabilistic leading to scalability issues for increasing number of qudits. Semiconductors Quantum Dots (QDs) have been used to get over these limitations being able to produce on demand pure and indistinguishable single-photon states, although only recently they were exploited to create OAM modes. Our work employs a bright QD single-photon source to generate a complete set of quantum states for information processing with OAM endowed photons. We first study the hybrid intra-particle entanglement between the OAM and the polarization degree of freedom of a single-photon. We certify the preparation of such a type of qudit states by means of the Hong-Ou-Mandel effect visibility which furnishes the pairwise overlap between consecutive OAM-encoded photons. Then, we investigate the hybrid inter-particle entanglement, by exploiting a probabilistic two qudit OAM-based entangling gate. The performances of our entanglement generation approach are assessed performing high dimensional quantum state tomography and violating Bell inequalities. Our results pave the way toward the use of deterministic sources (QDs) for the on demand generation of photonic quantum states in high dimensional Hilbert spaces.

Quantum networks are the center of many of the recent advances in quantum science, not only leading to the discovery of new properties in the foundations of quantum theory but also allowing for novel communication and cryptography protocols. It is known that networks beyond that in the paradigmatic Bell’s theorem imply new and sometimes stronger forms of nonclassicality. Due to a number of practical difficulties, however, the experimental implementation of such networks remains far less explored. Going beyond what has been previously tested, here we verify the nonlocality of an experimental triangle network, consisting of three independent sources of bipartite entangled photon states interconnecting three distant parties. By performing separable measurements only and evaluating parallel chained Bell inequalities, we show that such networks can lead to a genuine form of tripartite nonlocality, where classical models are unable to mimic the quantum predictions even if some of the parties are allowed to communicate.