1. Non-Abelian braiding on photonic chips
- Author
-
Zhang, Xu-Lin, Yu, Feng, Chen, Ze-Guo, Tian, Zhen-Nan, Chen, Qi-Dai, Sun, Hong-Bo, and Ma, Guancong
- Subjects
Physics - Optics - Abstract
Non-Abelian braiding has attracted significant attention because of its pivotal role in describing the exchange behaviors of anyons--a candidate for realizing quantum logics. The input and outcome of non-Abelian braiding are connected by a unitary matrix which can also physically emerge as a geometric-phase matrix in classical systems. Hence it is predicted that non-Abelian braiding should have analogues in photonics, but a feasible platform and the experimental realization remain out of reach. Here, we propose and experimentally realize an on-chip photonic system that achieves the non-Abelian braiding of up to five photonic modes. The braiding is realized by controlling the multi-mode geometric-phase matrix in judiciously designed photonic waveguide arrays. The quintessential effect of braiding--sequence-dependent swapping of photon dwell sites is observed in both classical-light and single-photon experiments. Our photonic chips are a versatile and expandable platform for studying non-Abelian physics, and we expect the results to motivate next-gen non-Abelian photonic devices., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures
- Published
- 2021
- Full Text
- View/download PDF