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Summary form only given. Contrarily to the classical physics picture, according to quantum mechanics the observable properties of the objects do not yield defined values, until a measurement is performed. The measurement outcome depends indeed also on the set of observables that is being measured [1]. Such a fundamental aspect of Nature is named quantum contextuality and it has been studied in several experimental systems, including single particles [2, 3]. Interestingly, it was recently suggested that even the non-classical power of quantum computing originates from contextuality [4]. Therefore, it is highly relevant to find experimental evidence of this aspect in technological platforms that may be adopted in future quantum computing devices, such as integrated photonics [5-7]. In this work we investigate experimentally quantum contextuality of a single photon on-a-chip, employing reconfigurable photonic circuits fabricated by femtosecond laser waveguide writing [7, 8].

Summary form only given. Photonic circuits represent a promising platform to perform quantum simulation of several different physical phenomena. Indeed, large progresses have been achieved in the last few years due to the technological advances enabled by integrated photonics, which allowed to achieve a significant increase in the size of the implemented systems. Notable examples of observed phenomena in integrated circuits include Anderson localization [1] and transport mechanisms [2].[4]). We discuss the photonic simulation of spin chain dynamics after a quench in a 5-site system [3]. Such dynamics present the feature of entangling distant spins in pairs starting from the input (separable) Neel state, thus obtaining an amount of entanglement which is proportional to the number of sites present in the system (volume law [4]). The verification of such increase in the amount of the generated entanglement provides a useful resource for several quantum information protocols, including quantum teleportation and quantum networking.