arXiv subjects

Xiaoying Li

Publications and source records attributed to Xiaoying Li.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2022

Measurement-dependent erasure of distinguishability for the observation of interference in an unbalanced SU(1,1) interferometer

It is known that quantum interference can disappear with the mere possibility of distinguishability without actually performing the act. We create such distinguishability in an unbalanced SU(1,1) interferometer and indeed observe no interference in the direct photodetection of the outputs. On the other hand, such distinguishability can be erased with a projective measurement. Here, we report a method of homodyne detection that can also recover interference effect. We find that it is the indistinguishability in amplitude measurement that leads to the recovery of interference, and the quantum nature of homodyne detection and the detector's slow response time both play an essential role. This is different from the quantum eraser schemes mentioned above. It demonstrates that quantum interference occurs in the measurement processes. With no need for path compensation, the unbalanced interferometers studied here should have practical applications in quantum metrology and sensing.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Propagation of temporal mode multiplexed optical fields in fibers: influence of dispersion

Exploiting two interfering fields which are initially in the same temporal mode but with the spectra altered by propagating through different fibers, we characterize how the spectra of temporal modes changes with the fiber induced dispersion by measuring the fourth-order interference when the order number and bandwidth of temporal modes are varied. The experiment is done by launching a pulsed field in different temporal modes into an unbalanced Mach-Zehnder interferometer, in which the fiber lengths in two arms are different. The results show that the mode mismatch of two interfering fields, reflected by the visibility and pattern of interference, is not only dependent upon the amount of unbalanced dispersion but also related to the order number of temporal mode. In particular, the two interfering fields may become orthogonal under a modest amount of unbalanced dispersion when the mode number of the fields is $k\geq2$. Moreover, we discuss how to recover the spectrally distorted temporal mode by measuring and compensating the transmission induced dispersion. Our investigation paves the way for further investigating the distribution of temporally multiplexed quantum states in fiber network.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2021

General considerations in unbalanced fourth-order interference

Interferometry has been used widely in sensing application. However, the technique is limited by the finite coherence time of the light sources when the interference paths are not balanced. Higher-order interference effects involve intensity correlations between multiple detectors and may have the advantage over the traditional second order interference effect exhibited in only one detector. We discuss various scenarios in fourth-order interference with unbalanced delays in different paths. We find in some cases, interference effect persists even when the delays are much larger than the coherence time of the sources. We also extend the discussion to non-stationary pulsed fields, which needs to consider the pulse shape and requires a different treatment. These results will be useful in remote sensing applications.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Programmable photon pair source

Photon pairs produced by the pulse-pumped nonlinear parametric processes have been a workhorse of quantum information science. Engineering the spectral property of the photon pairs is crucial in practical applications. In this article, we demonstrate a programmable photon pair source by exploiting a two-stage nonlinear interferometer with a phase-control device. The phase-control device introduces phase shifts by a programmable phase function that can be arbitrarily defined. With a properly designed phase function, the output spectrum of the source can be freely customized and changed without replacing any hardware component in the system. In addition to demonstrating the generation of photon pairs with factorable, positively-correlated, and negatively-correlated spectra, respectively, we show that the output of the source can be tailored into multi-channel spectrally factorable photon pairs without sacrificing efficiency. Such a source, having the ability to modify the spectrum of the photon pairs at will according to the chosen application, is a powerful tool for quantum information science.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2020

Towards Medical Knowmetrics: Representing and Computing Medical Knowledge using Semantic Predications as the Knowledge Unit and the Uncertainty as the Knowledge Context

In China, Prof. Hongzhou Zhao and Zeyuan Liu are the pioneers of the concept "knowledge unit" and "knowmetrics" for measuring knowledge. However, the definition of "computable knowledge object" remains controversial so far in different fields. For example, it is defined as 1) quantitative scientific concept in natural science and engineering, 2) knowledge point in the field of education research, and 3) semantic predications, i.e., Subject-Predicate-Object (SPO) triples in biomedical fields. The Semantic MEDLINE Database (SemMedDB), a high-quality public repository of SPO triples extracted from medical literature, provides a basic data infrastructure for measuring medical knowledge. In general, the study of extracting SPO triples as computable knowledge unit from unstructured scientific text has been overwhelmingly focusing on scientific knowledge per se. Since the SPO triples would be possibly extracted from hypothetical, speculative statements or even conflicting and contradictory assertions, the knowledge status (i.e., the uncertainty), which serves as an integral and critical part of scientific knowledge has been largely overlooked. This article aims to put forward a framework for Medical Knowmetrics using the SPO triples as the knowledge unit and the uncertainty as the knowledge context. The lung cancer publications dataset is used to validate the proposed framework. The uncertainty of medical knowledge and how its status evolves over time indirectly reflect the strength of competing knowledge claims, and the probability of certainty for a given SPO triple. We try to discuss the new insights using the uncertainty-centric approaches to detect research fronts, and identify knowledge claims with high certainty level, in order to improve the efficacy of knowledge-driven decision support.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2020

Engineering the spectral profile of photon pairs by using multi-stage nonlinear interferometers

Using the quantum interference of photon pairs in N-stage nonlinear interferometers (NLI), the contour of joint spectral function can be modified into islands pattern. We perform two series of experiments. One is that all the nonlinear fibers in pulse pumped NLI are identical; the other is that the lengths of N pieces nonlinear fibers are different. We not only demonstrate how the pattern of spectral function changes with the stage number N, but also characterize how the relative intensity of island peaks varies with N. The results, well agree with theoretical predictions in Ref. [1], reveal that the NLI with N pieces nonlinear fibers following binomial distribution can provide a better active filtering function. Our investigation shows that the active filtering effect of multi-stage NLI is a useful tool for efficiently engineering the factorable two-photon state - a desirable resource for quantum information processing.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2020

Decoupling Cross-Quadrature Correlations using Passive Operations

Quadrature correlations between subsystems of a Gaussian quantum state are fully characterised by its covariance matrix. For example, the covariance matrix determines the amount of entanglement or decoherence of the state. Here, we establish when it is possible to remove correlations between conjugate quadratures using only passive operations. Such correlations are usually undesired and arise due to experimental cross-quadrature contamination. Using the Autonne--Takagi factorisation, we present necessary and sufficient conditions to determine when such removal is possible. Our proof is constructive, and whenever it is possible we obtain an explicit expression for the required passive operation.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2020

Quantum Entangled Interferometers

A new type of quantum entangled interferometer was recently realized that employs parametric amplifiers as the wave splitting and recombination elements. The quantum entanglement stems from the parametric amplifiers, which produce quantum correlated fields for probing the phase change signal in the interferometer. This type of quantum entangled interferometer exhibits some unique properties that are different from traditional beam splitter-based interferometers such as Mach-Zehnder interferometers. Because of these properties, it is superior to the traditional interferometers in many aspects, especially in the phase measurement sensitivity. We will review its unique properties and applications in quantum metrology and sensing, quantum information, and quantum state engineering.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2020

Quantum state engineering by nonlinear quantum interference

Multi-photon quantum interference is the underlying principle for optical quantum information processing protocols. Indistinguishability is the key to quantum interference. Therefore, the success of many protocols in optical quantum information processing relies on the availability of photon states with a well-defined spatial and temporal mode. Photons in single spatial mode can be obtained from nonlinear processes in single-mode waveguides. For the temporal mode, the common approach is to engineer the nonlinear processes. But it is complicated because the spectral properties and the nonlinear interaction are often intertwined through phase matching condition. In this paper, we study a different approach which is based on an SU(1,1) nonlinear interferometer with a pulsed pump and a controllable linear spectral phase shift for precise engineering. We systematically analyze the important figures of merit such as modal purity and heralding efficiency to investigate the feasibility of this approach. Specifically, we analyze in detail the requirement on the spectral phase engineering to optimize the figures of merit and apply numerical simulations to a fiber system. Both modal purity and efficiency are improved simultaneously. Furthermore, a novel multi-stage nonlinear interferometer is proposed and shown to achieve more precise state engineering for near-ideal single-mode operation and near-unity efficiency. We also extend the study to the case of high gain in the four-wave mixing process for the spectral engineering of quantum entanglement in continuous variables. Our investigation provides a new approach for precisely tailoring the spectral property of quantum light sources, especially, photon pairs can be engineered to simultaneously possess the features of high purity, high collection efficiency, high brightness, and high flexibility in wavelength and bandwidth selection.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2020

Direct temporal mode measurement of photon pairs by stimulated emission

It is known that photon pairs generated from pulse-pumped spontaneous parametric processes can be described by independent temporal modes and form a multi-temporal mode entangled state. However, the exact form of the temporal modes is not known even though the joint spectral intensity of photon pairs can be measured by the method of stimulated emission tomography. In this paper, we describe a feedback-iteration method which, combined with the stimulated emission method, can give rise to the exact forms of the independent temporal modes for the temporally entangled photon pairs.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2020

Direct temporal mode measurement for the characterization of temporally multiplexed high dimensional quantum entanglement in continuous variables

Field-orthogonal temporal mode analysis of optical fields is recently developed for a new framework of quantum information science. But so far, the exact profiles of the temporal modes are not known, which makes it difficult to achieve mode selection and de-multiplexing. Here, we report a novel method that measures directly the exact form of the temporal modes. This in turn enables us to make mode-orthogonal homodyne detection with mode-matched local oscillators. We apply the method to a pulse-pumped, specially engineered fiber parametric amplifier and demonstrate temporally multiplexed multi-dimensional quantum entanglement of continuous variables in telecom wavelength. The temporal mode characterization technique can be generalized to other pulse-excited systems to find their eigen modes for multiplexing in temporal domain.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2020

Accessible precisions for estimating two conjugate parameters using Gaussian probes

We analyse the precision limits for simultaneous estimation of a pair of conjugate parameters in a displacement channel using Gaussian probes. Having a set of squeezed states as an initial resource, we compute the Holevo Cramér-Rao bound to investigate the best achievable estimation precisions if only passive linear operations are allowed to be performed on the resource prior to probing the channel. The analysis reveals the optimal measurement scheme and allows us to quantify the best precision for one parameter when the precision of the second conjugate parameter is fixed. To estimate the conjugate parameter pair with equal precision, our analysis shows that the optimal probe is obtained by combining two squeezed states with orthogonal squeezing quadratures on a 50:50 beam splitter. If different importance are attached to each parameter, then the optimal mixing ratio is no longer 50:50. Instead it follows a simple function of the available squeezing and the relative importance between the two parameters.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2020

Generation of pure-state single photons with high heralding efficiency by using a three-stage nonlinear interferometer

We experimentally study a fiber-based three-stage nonlinear interferometer and demonstrate its application in generating heralded single photons with high efficiency and purity by spectral engineering. We obtain a heralding efficiency of 90% at a brightness of 0.039 photons/pulse. The purity of the source is checked by two-photon Hong-Ou-Mandel interference with a visibility of 95%+-6% (after correcting Raman scattering and multi-pair events). Our investigation indicates that the heralded source of single photons produced by the three-stage nonlinear interferometer has the advantages of high purity, high heralding efficiency, high brightness, and flexibility in wavelength and bandwidth selection.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2019

Measuring the continuous variable quantum entanglement with a parametric amplifier assisted homodyne detection

Traditional method for measuring continuous-variable quantum entanglement relies on balanced homodyne detections, which are sensitive to vacuum quantum noise coupled in through losses resulted from many factors such as detector's quantum efficiency and mode mismatching between detected field and local oscillator. In this paper, we propose and analyze a new measurement method, which is realized by assisting the balanced homodyne detections with a high gain phase sensitive parametric amplifier. The employment of the high gain parametric amplifier helps to tackle the vacuum quantum noise originated from detection losses. Moreover, because the high gain parametric amplifier can couple two fields of different types in a phase sensitive manner, the proposed scheme can be used to reveal quantum entanglement between two fields of different types by using only one balanced homodyne detection. Furthermore, detailed analysis shows that in the multi-mode case, the proposed scheme is also advantageous over the traditional method. Such a new measurement method should find wide applications in quantum information and quantum metrology involving measurement of continuous variables.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2018

Optimum quantum resource distribution for phase measurement and quantum information tapping in a dual-beam SU(1,1) interferometer

Quantum entanglement is a resource in quantum metrology that can be distributed to two orthogonal physical quantities for the enhancement of their joint measurement sensitivity, as demonstrated in quantum dense metrology. On the other hand, we can also devote all the quantum resource to phase measurement only for optimum measurement sensitivity. Here, we experimentally implement a dual-beam scheme in an SU(1,1) interferometer for the optimum phase measurement sensitivity. We demonstrate a 3.9-dB improvement in signal-to-noise ratio over the optimum classical method and this is 3-dB better than the traditional single-beam scheme. Furthermore, such a scheme also realizes a quantum optical tap of quantum entangled fields and has the full advantages of an SU(1,1) interferometer for practical applications in quantum metrology and quantum information.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2018

Interference between two independent multi-mode thermal fields

We study the property of the field which is a mixing of two multi-mode thermal fields. We accomplish a general theoretical analysis and show that the mode of the mixed field, characterized by its intensity correlation function $g^{(2)}$, is determined by the two-photon interference between the two independent multi-mode thermal fields. Our analysis reveals that the mode structures of the two thermal fields play an important role in the interference. Comparing with $g^{(2)}$ for one of the individual field with less average mode number, $g^{(2)}$ of the mixed field always decreases due to the change of mode distribution, but the amount of drop depends on the relative overlap between the mode structures of the two thermal fields and their relative strength. Moreover, we verify the theoretical analysis by performing the experiments when the modes of two multi-mode thermal fields are identical, orthogonal and partially overlapped, respectively. The experimental results agree with theoretical predictions. Our investigation is useful for analyzing the signals carried by the intensity correlation of multi-mode thermal fields.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2018

Joint Multi-Parameter Measurement

Although quantum metrology allows us to make precision measurement beyond the standard quantum limit, it mostly works on the measurement of only one observable due to Heisenberg uncertainty relation on the measurement precision of non-commuting observables for one system. In this paper, we study the schemes of joint measurement of multiple observables which do not commute with each other by using the quantum entanglement between two systems. We focus on analyzing the performance of newly developed SU(1,1) interferometer on fulfilling the task of joint measurement. The results show that the information encoded in multiple non-commuting observables on an optical field can be simultaneously measured with a signal-to-noise ratio higher than the standard quantum limit, and the ultimate limit of each observable is still the Heisenberg limit. Moreover, we find a resource conservation rule for the joint measurement.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2017

Quantum enhanced joint measurement of multiple non-commuting observables with SU(1,1) interferometer

Heisenberg uncertainty relation in quantum mechanics sets the limit on the measurement precision of non-commuting observables, which prevents us from measuring them accurately at the same time. In some applications, however, the information are embedded in two or more non-commuting observables. On the other hand, quantum entanglement allows us to infer through Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen correlations two conjugate observables with precision better than what is allowed by Heisenberg uncertainty relation. With the help of the newly developed SU(1,1) interferometer, we implement a scheme to measure jointly information encoded in multiple non-commuting observables of an optical field with a signal-to-noise ratio improvement of about 20 % over the standard quantum limit on all measured quantities simultaneously. This scheme can be generalized to the joint measurement of information in arbitrary number of non-commuting observables.

quant-ph↗