Quantum Information Processing with Bosonic Systems

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Quantum technology is widely anticipated to revolutionize numerous technological areas, such as computation, communication, sensing. Most current quantum technology research has focused on two-level (qubit) systems, but this approach suffers from major drawbacks in scalability and information capacity. In my NSERC Discovery program, I will target a promising alternative: bosonic quantum technology. Unlike a qubit, each bosonic mode offers effectively infinite quantum levels to store information. Furthermore, bosonic systems are ubiquitous in many platforms (e.g. photons, mechanical oscillators), some even incorporate 10,000 times more units than qubit devices. Nevertheless, analyzing the enormous bosonic degree of freedom is challenging, so nearly all aspects of bosonic technology, including applications, information encoding, and device analysis, have been less studied than qubit counterparts. Building on my past successes in filling some of these theoretical gaps, the long-term goal of my program is to further improve the practicality of bosonic quantum technology. In the next 5 years, my team will address three short-term objectives: 1: Develop bosonic simulator for open quantum systems (systems interacting with a bath). Highly scalable bosonic platforms allow both system and bath to be simulated. We will formulate the architecture of such simulator and analyze its error due to practical imperfections. 2: Devise protocol to extract continuous-variable (CV) resources. CV cluster state is the class of resourceful bosonic state (entanglement) that can be efficiently generated, but its utility is debatable due to intrinsic error. We will analyze its mathematical structure so as to devise procedures to convert the CV entanglement to qubit entanglement, which has numerous applications and well-studied error correction strategies. 3: Refine hybrid interface between itinerant and localized modes. We will explore strategies, e.g. high-speed control, recycling imperfect entanglement, and non-linear interaction, to distribute quantum resources more efficiently in remote devices. These works will make transformative contributions to a largely unexplored type of quantum technology with incredible potential. Specifically, our results will: 1) facilitate the development of a powerful simulator for studying open quantum phenomena, e.g. chemical and biological processes, which are of broad interest but too resource demanding to simulate with today's computers; 2) lead to a new `top-down' quantum computer that can evade the scalability bottleneck of existing qubit computers; 3) enable high-quality quantum networks that have diverse applications, e.g. in secure communication and precise telescopy. Additionally, the HQP trained in my program will become experts in quantum technology. Both the technological advancements and trained personnel in my program will help fuel Canada's blooming quantum industry; this will bring social and economic benefits to Canada.