Quantum transport simulations in a programmable nanophotonic processor
Nicholas C. Harris⋆ Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA Gregory R. Steinbrecher Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA Jacob Mower Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA Yoav Lahini Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA Mihika Prabhu Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA Darius Bunandar Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA Changchen Chen Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA Franco N. C. Wong Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA Tom Baehr-Jones Elenion Technologies, 171 Madison Avenue, Suite 1100, New York, NY 10016, USA Michael Hochberg Elenion Technologies, 171 Madison Avenue, Suite 1100, New York, NY 10016, USA Seth Lloyd Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA Dirk Englund Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA ⋆Corresponding author.
Abstract
Environmental noise and disorder play critical roles in quantum particle and wave transport in complex media, including solid-state and biological systems. Recent work has predicted that coupling between noisy environments and disordered systems, in which coherent transport has been arrested due to localization effects, could actually enhance transport. Photonic integrated circuits are promising platforms for studying such effects, with a central goal being the development of large systems providing low-loss, high-fidelity control over all parameters of the transport problem. Here, we fully map the role of disorder in quantum transport using a nanophotonic processor consisting of a mesh of 88 generalized beamsplitters programmable on microsecond timescales. Over 64,400 transport experiments, we observe several distinct transport regimes, including environment-assisted quantum transport and the “quantum Goldilocks” regime in strong, statically disordered discrete-time systems. Low loss and high-fidelity programmable transformations make this nanophotonic processor a promising platform for many-boson quantum simulation experiments.
中文速览
量子粒子在复杂介质中的输运效率会同时受到静态无序（固定的随机散射）和动态无序（环境噪声）的影响，而如何在同一平台上系统地调控这两类无序并全面绘制其相互作用图谱，此前一直是实验上的难题。研究团队制造了一块由88个可编程广义分束器构成的纳米光子处理器（nanophotonic processor，PNP），能在微秒级时间尺度内灵活重构所有参数，并在其上完成了64,400次量子输运实验，系统地扫描了静态与动态无序强度的全组合空间。实验首次在离散时间系统中直接观测到"环境辅助量子输运"（environment-assisted quantum transport，ENAQT）——即适量的环境噪声能够解除安德森局域化（Anderson localization）对粒子输运的抑制，并同时发现了"量子金发女孩"（quantum Goldilocks）区域，证明存在一个噪声强度的"恰好"窗口使输运效率最优。这项工作不仅为理解光合作用等生物系统中高效能量传输的量子机制提供了实验依据，其低损耗、高保真度的可编程特性也使该平台成为未来多光子量子模拟与量子计算的重要候选硬件。
原文 arXiv:1507.03406;中英对照 + 大白话阅读 https://aha.fim.ai/paper/1507.03406v3