arXiv subjects

Dario Gerace

Publications and source records attributed to Dario Gerace.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Coexistence of polariton bound states in the continuum and 2D radiative excitons

Bound states in the continuum (BICs) enable optical modes with ideally infinite radiative lifetimes despite lying within the radiation continuum. Radiation-matter interaction in periodically patterned planar waveguides embedding two-dimensional (2D) optically active excitations can be described quantum mechanically by diagonalizing a non-Hermitian operator, known as the Hopfield matrix, which can be generalized to incorporate independent photonic and excitonic losses into the polaritonic states. However, since 2D excitons undergo intrinsic wavevector-dependent radiative decay within the light cone, whether the Hopfield formalism can consistently account for this process while preserving polariton BICs has remained an open question. Here we show that a non-Hermitian Hopfield formalism incorporating excitonic radiative losses correctly captures the existence of genuine $k=0$ polariton BICs with diverging radiative lifetimes. The theory provides a unified microscopic framework for radiative excitons and polariton BICs, and an efficient predictive tool for designing photonic-crystal platforms coupled to quantum wells, transition-metal dichalcogenides, and other 2D excitonic materials.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2026

Geometric optimality of entanglement-induced fast qubit reset

Fast and reliable qubit reset is essential for the efficient operation of quantum processors. Among the proposed strategies, Mpemba-effect-based protocols offer a simple route to accelerated relaxation, but provide limited insight into the optimality of the full reset dynamics. Geometric approaches, by contrast, quantify optimality but do not generally suggest practical acceleration protocols. Here, we bridge these perspectives through a geometric analysis of entanglement-assisted qubit reset. We show that entangling operations can redistribute local coherences across a multi-qubit register, allowing the reduced state of each qubit to follow a geodesic path towards the ground state. Remarkably, this locally optimal behaviour can emerge even when the collective evolution becomes suboptimal in the full state space. We illustrate this interplay for different families of initial multi-qubit states. Our results provide a geometric perspective on Mpemba-inspired reset acceleration and clarify when extending two-qubit protocols to larger registers provides a further advantage in the reset process.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Maximum-precision charging of multi-qubit quantum batteries

Precision, robustness, and efficiency are central requirements for quantum technologies. We show that genuine quantum features combined with non-Gaussianity enable the simultaneous optimization of these properties in a quantum battery-charging process. Using a generalized Jaynes-Cummings interaction as a paradigmatic light-matter interaction model, we apply the Full Counting Statistics to characterize stochastic energy exchanges between a stack of qubits and a single-mode bosonic field. We demonstrate that a sequential charging protocol driven by a non-Gaussian quantum field yields high performance in charging precision, which remains maximal even under suboptimal operating conditions. Our results establish the use of non-Gaussian quantum-states in battery charging as a robust route to a quantum precision advantage over protocols based on Gaussian states, achieved through the suppression of detrimental quantum fluctuations.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Fully Integrated Perovskite Polaritonic Circuits with Tunable Lasing and Nonlinear Amplification

Photonic integrated circuits are emerging as a key technology for compact and energy-efficient optical information processing. Yet, their practical implementation remains limited by the intrinsically weak optical nonlinearities of conventional materials, which demand high power and large footprints to achieve significant nonlinear responses. Exciton-polaritons, hybrid light-matter excitations of semiconducting materials, offer a promising solution by combining strong optical nonlinearities with the high speed and large scalability typical of photonic devices. However, despite their potential, working on-chip polaritonic elements demonstrating room temperature coherent lasing, controllable nonlinear propagation, or amplification have remained elusive. Here we demonstrate a fully integrated perovskite polaritonic circuit that overcomes these limitations. Using a single-step microfluidic lithographic technique, we realize waveguide circuits with integrated gratings that simultaneously act as couplers and mirrors, forming in-plane Fabry-P\'erot cavities. These structures support robust in-plane polariton lasing between gratings, yielding coherent emission along the waveguide. Furthermore, we observe clear signatures of strong nonlinear self-phase modulation and, for the first time, optical amplification of guided polaritons at room temperature. Our simple, scalable platform opens the way to low-power, highly nonlinear optical circuits for integrated photonics and neuromorphic architectures operating at room temperature.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2025

Shaping Bulk Fermi Arcs in the Momentum Space of Photonic Crystal Slabs

Exceptional points (EPs) are special spectral degeneracies of non-Hermitian operators: at the EP, the complex eigenvalues coalesce, i.e., they become degenerate in both their real and imaginary parts. In two-dimensional (2D) photonic crystal lattices, these elements can be tailored through structural engineering. In particular, it is known that a quadratic degeneracy in the photonic band structure can be split into a pair of Dirac points (DPs) by breaking one of the unit cell symmetries, and each DP can be further split into a pair of EPs by introducing losses. Each EP of the pair is then connected by an open isofrequency curve, called the bulk Fermi arc (BFA). In this work, we introduce a simplified effective Hamiltonian model accounting for the main physical properties of these EPs and BFAs. Then, we systematically investigate, through numerical simulations, how EPs as well as the related BFA depend on the type and amount of broken symmetries in the given 2D unit cell of a realistic photonic crystal slab implementation. Our results show that it is possible to tailor the position and distance of the EP pair in reciprocal space, as well as the curvature and orientation of the associated BFA, by deterministically tuning the unit cell structure. Importantly, the symmetry-breaking strategy we propose is general and can be applied to a broad range of photonic crystal designs beyond the specific example studied here. This approach opens new possibilities for exploiting EPs in applications involving photonic crystal lattices in, e.g., light-emitting devices or fundamental physics studies.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2025

Symmetry-guided quantum state preparation: Branched-Subspaces Adiabatic Preparation (B-SAP)

Quantum state preparation lies at the heart of quantum computation and quantum simulations, enabling the investigation of complex manybody systems across physics, chemistry, and data science. While existing methods such as Variational Quantum Algorithms (VQAs) and Adiabatic Preparation (AP) offer viable pathways, both face substantial limitations. Here we introduce a hybrid algorithm that integrates the conceptual strengths of both VQAs and AP, enhanced via the use of group-theoretic structures and classical post-processing to approximate ground and excited states of many-body Hamiltonian models. We validate our approach by applying it to the one-dimensional XYZ Heisenberg model with periodic boundary conditions, evaluating its performance across a broad range of parameters and system sizes. Our results show accurate preparation of low-energy eigenstates, achieved with circuit depths with polynomial scaling versus system size.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Towards Practical Quantum Neural Network Diagnostics with Neural Tangent Kernels

Knowing whether a Quantum Machine Learning model would perform well on a given dataset before training it can help to save critical resources. However, gathering a priori information about model performance (e.g., training speed, critical hyperparameters, or inference capabilities on unseen data) is a highly non-trivial task, in general. Recently, the Quantum Neural Tangent Kernel (QNTK) has been proposed as a powerful mathematical tool to describe the behavior of Quantum Neural Network (QNN) models. In this work, we propose a practical framework allowing to employ the QNTK for QNN performance diagnostics. More specifically, we show how a critical learning rate and a characteristic decay time for the average training error can be estimated from the spectrum of the QNTK evaluated at the initialization stage. We then show how a QNTK-based kernel formula can be used to analyze, up to a first-order approximation, the expected inference capabilities of the quantum model under study. We validate our proposed approach with extensive numerical simulations, using different QNN architectures and datasets. Our results demonstrate that QNTK diagnostics yields accurate approximations of QNN behavior for sufficiently deep circuits, can provide insights for shallow QNNs, and enables detecting - hence also addressing - potential shortcomings in model design.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Reliable quantum advantage in quantum battery charging

Quantum batteries represent one of the most promising applications of quantum thermodynamics, whose goal is not only to store energy inside small quantum systems but also to potentially leverage genuine quantum effects to outperform classical counterparts. In this context, however, energy fluctuations become extremely relevant and have a significant impact on the charging efficiency. In our work, we consider a simple yet paradigmatic model in which a flying qubit (the battery) coherently interacts with a single mode optical cavity (the charger) through a number conserving Jaynes-Cummings interaction. By making use of full-counting statistics techniques, we fully characterize the average charging power, its fluctuations and the associated charging efficiency for several different choices of initial states of the optical cavity, demonstrating that preparing the latter in a genuinely quantum non-Gaussian Fock state (rather than a classical or even non-classical Gaussian state) leads to a definite and (in principle) measurable advantage in all these figures of merit.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Resource-efficient quantum algorithm for linear systems of equations

Finding the solution to linear systems is at the heart of many applications in science and technology. Over the years a number of algorithms have been proposed to solve this problem on a digital quantum device, yet most of these are too demanding to be applied to the current noisy hardware. In this work, an original algorithmic procedure to solve the Quantum Linear System Problem (QLSP) is presented, which combines ideas from Variational Quantum Algorithms (VQA) and the framework of classical shadows. The result is the Shadow Quantum Linear Solver (SQLS), a quantum algorithm solving the QLSP avoiding the need for large controlled unitaries, requiring a number of qubits that is logarithmic in the system size. In particular, our heuristics show an exponential advantage of the SQLS in circuit execution per cost function evaluation when compared to other notorious variational approaches to solving linear systems of equations. We test the convergence of the SQLS on a number of linear systems, and results highlight how the theoretical bounds on the number of resources used by the SQLS are conservative. Finally, we apply this algorithm to a physical problem of practical relevance, by leveraging decomposition theorems from linear algebra to solve the discretized Laplace Equation in a 2D grid for the first time using a hybrid quantum algorithm.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

A single-photon microwave switch with recoverable control photon

Scalable quantum technologies may be applied in prospective architectures employing traditional information processing elements, such as transistors, rectifiers, or switches modulated by low-power inputs. In this respect, recently developed quantum processors based, e.g., on superconducting circuits may alternatively be employed as the basic platform for ultra-low-power consumption classical processors, in addition to obvious applications in quantum information processing and quantum computing. Here we propose a single-photon microwave switch based on a circuit quantum electrodynamics setup, in which a single control photon in a transmission line is able to switch on/off the propagation of another single photon in a separate line. The performances of this single-photon switch are quantified in terms of the photon flux through the output channel, providing a direct comparison of our results with available data. Furthermore, we show how the design of this microwave switch enables the recovery of the single control photon after the switching process. This proposal may be readily realized in state-of-art superconducting circuit technology.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Supersolidity of polariton condensates in photonic crystal waveguides

Condensation of exciton-polaritons has been recently observed in one-dimensional photonic crystal waveguides, exploiting the interplay of long-lived gap confined eigenmodes and negative mass polariton branches. Here we focus on the theoretical emergence of a second emission threshold, in addition to the one associated with condensation at zero-momentum, due to the nonlinear polariton scattering from the condensate into finite momentum eigenmodes. The physics of this spatially modulated condensate is related to a spontaneous breaking of both phase and translational symmetries simultaneously, bearing strong similarities with the highly sought supersolid phase in Helium and ultracold atomic gases but with a novel mechanism typical of the driven-dissipative scenario. We then propose clear-cut and unequivocal experimental signatures that would allow to identify supersolidity phenomena in polariton condensates

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2024

Emerging supersolidity from a polariton condensate in a photonic crystal waveguide

A supersolid is a counter-intuitive phase of matter where its constituent particles are arranged into a crystalline structure, yet they are free to flow without friction. This requires the particles to share a global macroscopic phase while being able to reduce their total energy by spontaneous, spatial self-organisation. This exotic state of matter has been achieved in different systems using Bose-Einstein condensates coupled to cavities, possessing spin-orbit coupling, or dipolar interactions. Here we provide experimental evidence of a new implementation of the supersolid phase in a novel non-equilibrium context based on exciton-polaritons condensed in a topologically non-trivial, bound-in-the-continuum state with exceptionally low losses. We measure the density modulation of the polaritonic state indicating the breaking of translational symmetry with a remarkable precision of a few parts in a thousand. Direct access to the phase of the wavefunction allows us to additionally measure the local coherence of the superfluid component. We demonstrate the potential of our synthetic photonic material to host phonon dynamics and a multimode excitation spectrum.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2024

Long-range ballistic propagation of 80$\%$-excitonic-fraction polaritons in a perovskite metasurface at room temperature

Exciton-polaritons, hybrid light-matter elementary excitations arising from the strong coupling regime between excitons in semiconductors and photons in photonic nanostructures, offer a fruitful playground to explore the physics of quantum fluids of light as well as to develop all-optical devices. However, achieving room temperature propagation of polaritons with a large excitonic fraction, which would be crucial, e.g., for nonlinear light transport in prospective devices, remains a significant challenge. } Here we report on experimental studies of exciton-polariton propagation at room temperature in resonant metasurfaces made from a sub-wavelength lattice of perovskite pillars. Thanks to the large Rabi splitting, an order of magnitude larger than the optical phonon energy, the lower polariton band is completely decoupled from the phonon bath of perovskite crystals. The long lifetime of these cooled polaritons, in combination with the high group velocity achieved through the metasurface design, enables long-range propagation regardless of the polariton excitonic fraction. Remarkably, we observed propagation distances exceeding hundreds of micrometers at room temperature, even when the polaritons possess a very high excitonic component, approximately {80}$\%$. Furthermore, the design of the metasurface introduces an original mechanism for directing uni-directional propagation through polarization control. This discovery of a ballistic propagation mode, leveraging high-speed cooled polaritons, heralds a promising avenue for the development of advanced polaritonic devices.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2024

Exponential optimization of adiabatic quantum-state preparation

The preparation of a given quantum state on a quantum computing register is a typically demanding operation, requiring a number of elementary gates that scales exponentially with the size of the problem. Using the adiabatic theorem for state preparation, whose error decreases exponentially as a function of the preparation time, we derive an explicit analytic expression for the dependence of the characteristic time on the Hamiltonian used in the adiabatic evolution. Exploiting this knowledge, we then design a preconditioning term that modifies the adiabatic preparation, thus reducing its characteristic time and hence giving an exponential advantage in state preparation. We prove the efficiency of our method with extensive numerical experiments on prototypical spin-models, which gives a promising strategy to perform quantum simulations of manybody models via Trotter evolution on near-term quantum processors.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

A General Approach to Dropout in Quantum Neural Networks

In classical Machine Learning, "overfitting" is the phenomenon occurring when a given model learns the training data excessively well, and it thus performs poorly on unseen data. A commonly employed technique in Machine Learning is the so called "dropout", which prevents computational units from becoming too specialized, hence reducing the risk of overfitting. With the advent of Quantum Neural Networks as learning models, overfitting might soon become an issue, owing to the increasing depth of quantum circuits as well as multiple embedding of classical features, which are employed to give the computational nonlinearity. Here we present a generalized approach to apply the dropout technique in Quantum Neural Network models, defining and analysing different quantum dropout strategies to avoid overfitting and achieve a high level of generalization. Our study allows to envision the power of quantum dropout in enabling generalization, providing useful guidelines on determining the maximal dropout probability for a given model, based on overparametrization theory. It also highlights how quantum dropout does not impact the features of the Quantum Neural Networks model, such as expressibility and entanglement. All these conclusions are supported by extensive numerical simulations, and may pave the way to efficiently employing deep Quantum Machine Learning models based on state-of-the-art Quantum Neural Networks.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Deterministic entangling gates with nonlinear quantum photonic interferometers

The quantum computing paradigm in photonics currently relies on the multi-port interference in linear optical devices, which is intrinsically based on probabilistic measurements outcome and thus non-deterministic. Devising a fully deterministic, universal, and practically achievable quantum computing platform based on integrated photonic circuits is still an open challenge. Here we propose to exploit weakly nonlinear photonic devices to implement deterministic entangling quantum gates, following the definition of dual rail photonic qubits. It is shown that a universal set of single- and two-qubit gates can be designed by a suitable concatenation of few optical interferometric elements, with optimal fidelities arbitrarily close to 100% theoretically demonstrated through a bound constrained optimization algorithm. The actual realization would require the concatenation of a few tens of elementary operations, as well as on-chip optical nonlinearities that are compatible with some of the existing quantum photonic platforms, as it is finally discussed.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Theory of exciton-polariton condensation in gap-confined eigenmodes

Exciton-polaritons are bosonic-like elementary excitations in semiconductors, which have been recently shown to display large occupancy of topologically protected polariton bound states in the continuum in suitably engineered photonic lattices [Nature {\bf 605}, 447 (2022)], compatible with the definition of polariton condensation. However, a full theoretical description of such condensation mechanism that is based on a non equilibrium Gross-Pitaevskii formulation is still missing. Given that the latter is well known to account for polariton condensation in conventional semiconductor microcavities, here we report on its multi-mode generalization, showing that it allows to fully interpret the recent experimental findings in patterned photonic lattices, including emission characteristics and condensation thresholds. Beyond that, it is shown that the polariton condensation in these systems is actually the result of an interplay between negative mass confinement of polariton eigenstates (e.g., due to the photonic gap originated from the periodic pattern in plane) and polariton losses. We are then able to show that polariton condensation can also occur in gap-confined bright modes, i.e., coupling of QW excitons to a dark photonic mode is not necessarily required to achieve a macroscopic occupation with low population threshold.

cond-mat.other↗

arXiv2022

Theory of photonic crystal polaritons in periodically patterned multilayer waveguides

We present a formalism for studying the radiation-matter interaction in multilayered dielectric structures with active semiconductor quantum wells patterned with an in-plane periodic lattice. The theory is based on the diagonalization of the generalized Hopfield matrix, and it includes loss channels in a non-Hermitian formulation. Hybrid elementary excitations named photonic crystal polaritons arise in these systems, whose detailed dispersion and loss characteristics are shown to depend on material composition as well as on symmetry properties of the lattice. We show the generality of the approach by calculating polariton dispersions in very diverse material platforms, such as multilayered perovskite-based lattices or inorganic semiconductor heterostructures. As an application of the method, we show how to engineer lossless polariton modes through excitonic coupling to bound states in the continuum at either zero or finite in-plane wavevector, and discuss their topological properties. Detailed comparison with a semiclassical approach based on the scattering matrix method is provided, which allows to interpret the optical spectra in terms of polarization-dependent excitation of the different polariton branches. This work introduces an efficient and invaluably versatile numerical approach to engineer photonic crystal polaritons, with potential applications ranging from low-threshold lasers to symmetry-protected propagating modes of hybrid radiation-matter states.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗