Hybridization of pulse and continuous-wave based optical quantum computation

Abstract: We propose a pulse and continuous wave (CW) hybrid architecture of continuous-variable measurement-based optical quantum computation utilizing the strengths of both pulsed and CW light. In this architecture, input and ancillary non-Gaussian quantum states necessary for fault-tolerance and universality of quantum computing are generated with pulsed light, whereas quantum processors including continuous-variable cluster states and homodyne measurement systems are operated with CW light. This architecture is expected to enable both generation of quantum states with shorter optical wavepackets and low-loss manipulation and measurement of these states, thus is compatible with ultrafast and low-loss quantum information processing. In this study, as a proof-of-principle, an ultrafast homodyne measurement using CW local oscillator was performed on single-photon states generated with pulsed light. The measured single-photon state's temporal width was around 70 ps and the value of the Wigner function at the origin was W(0,0) = -0.153 +/- 0.003, which is highly non-classical. This will be a core technology for realizing high-speed optical quantum information processing.