Deterministic generation of large-scale photonic GHZ states utilizing spin echo in a solid-state quantum light source

Abstract

Quantum technologies witness rapid contemporary developments transitioning from abstract scientific ideas and fundamental demonstrations, into systems of sufficient quality and scale, enabling real applications. Photonic quantum technologies are playing a pivotal role in these developments, since photons are robust, easily controlled, detect and measured, thus qualify as flying carriers of quantum information and entanglement distributers. The efforts to develop photonic quantum technologies benefit from the maturity of the classical optical technologies. It was shown that even a source of heralded three entangled photons is sufficient for building large scale quantum computers using otherwise classical optical elements. Here, we demonstrate a novel semiconductor quantum dot based device, which deterministically generate at GHz rates, indistinguishable single photons in a robust Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) state of more than a dozen photons. The device utilizes novel natural spin echo concept, provided by the opposite precession directions of the negative and positive carriers' spins in the excited and ground levels of the periodically excited dot, respectively. The excitation rate is finely tuned to nullify the phase acquired by both spins' precession. Our record long GHZ state producing device can yet be feasibly improved to provide higher-rate, brighter and more robust deterministic GHZ source, significantly reducing the overhead requirements for photonic quantum technologies.