Non-Abelian braiding on photonic chips
Non-Abelian braiding on photonic chips
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DOI：
10.1038/s41566-022-00976-2
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发表时间：
2021-12
期刊：
影响因子：
35
通讯作者：
Xu-Lin Zhang;Feng Yu;Ze-Guo Chen;Zhen-Nan Tian;Qidai Chen;Hongbo Sun;Guancong Ma
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Xu-Lin Zhang;Feng Yu;Ze-Guo Chen;Zhen-Nan Tian;Qidai Chen;Hongbo Sun;Guancong Ma
非阿贝尔辫因其在描述任意子交换行为中的关键作用而引起了人们的广泛关注，任意子是实现量子逻辑的候选者。非阿贝尔编织的输入和输出由一个酉矩阵连接，该酉矩阵在物理上也可以作为经典系统中的几何相位矩阵出现。因此，它是预测，非阿贝尔编织应该有类似的光子学，虽然一个可行的平台和实验实现仍然遥不可及。在这里，我们提出并实验实现了一个片上光子系统，实现了多达五个光子模式的非阿贝尔编织。通过合理设计光子波导阵列，控制多模几何相位矩阵实现编织。经典光和单光子实验都观察到了编织序列相关的光子驻留位置交换的典型效应。我们的光子芯片是研究非阿贝尔物理学的通用和可扩展平台，我们希望研究结果能够激励下一代非阿贝尔光子器件。
Non-Abelian braiding has attracted substantial attention because of its pivotal role in describing the exchange behaviour of anyons—candidates for realizing quantum logics. The input and outcome of non-Abelian braiding are connected by a unitary matrix that can also physically emerge as a geometric-phase matrix in classical systems. Hence it is predicted that non-Abelian braiding should have analogues in photonics, although a feasible platform and the experimental realization remain out of reach. Here we propose and experimentally realize an on-chip photonic system that achieves the non-Abelian braiding of up to five photonic modes. The braiding is realized by controlling the multi-mode geometric-phase matrix in judiciously designed photonic waveguide arrays. The quintessential effect of braiding—sequence-dependent swapping of photon dwell sites—is observed in both classical-light and single-photon experiments. Our photonic chips are a versatile and expandable platform for studying non-Abelian physics, and we expect the results to motivate next-generation non-Abelian photonic devices.