Towards High-Fidelity Quantum Computation and Simulation on a Programmable Photonic Integrated Circuit

Abstract: We propose and analyze the design of a programmable photonic integrated circuit for high-fidelity quantum computation and simulation. We demonstrate that the reconfigurability of our design allows us to overcome two major impediments to quantum optics on a chip: it removes the need for a full fabrication cycle for each experiment and allows for compensation of fabrication errors using numerical optimization techniques. Under a pessimistic fabrication model for the silicon-on-insulator process, we demonstrate a dramatic fidelity improvement for the linear optics CNOT and CPHASE gates and, showing the scalability of this approach, the iterative phase estimation algorithm built from individually optimized gates. We also propose and simulate a novel experiment that the programmability of our system would enable: a statistically robust study of the evolution of entangled photons in disordered quantum walks. Overall, our results suggest that existing fabrication processes are sufficient to build a quantum photonic processor capable of high fidelity operation.