English

Quantum Experiments and Hypergraphs: Multi-Photon Sources for Quantum Interference, Quantum Computation and Quantum Entanglement

Quantum Physics 2020-03-17 v2

Abstract

We introduce the concept of hypergraphs to describe quantum optical experiments with probabilistic multi-photon sources. Every hyperedge represents a correlated photon source, and every vertex stands for an optical output path. Such general graph description provides new insights for producing complex high-dimensional multi-photon quantum entangled states, which go beyond limitations imposed by pair creation via spontaneous parametric down-conversion. Furthermore, properties of hypergraphs can be investigated experimentally. For example, the NP-Complete problem of deciding whether a hypergraph has a perfect matchin can be answered by experimentally detecting multi-photon events in quantum experiments. By introducing complex weights in hypergraphs, we show a general many-particle quantum interference and manipulating entanglement in a pictorial way. Our work paves the path for the development of multi-photon high-dimensional state generation and might inspire new applications of quantum computations using hypergraph mappings.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2003.01910,
  title  = {Quantum Experiments and Hypergraphs: Multi-Photon Sources for Quantum Interference, Quantum Computation and Quantum Entanglement},
  author = {Xuemei Gu and Lijun Chen and Mario Krenn},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2003.01910},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

14pages, 11figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T14:03:15.469Z