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Over the last few decades, nonlinear optics has become significantly more nonlinear, traversing nearly a billionfold improvement in energy efficiency, with ultrafast nonlinear nanophotonics in particular emerging as a frontier for combining both spatial and temporal engineering. At present, cutting-edge experiments in nonlinear nanophotonics place us just above themesoscopicregime, where a few hundred photons suffice to trigger highly nonlinear dynamics. In contrast to classical or deep-quantum optics, the mesoscale is characterized by dynamical interactions between mean-field, Gaussian, and non-Gaussian quantum features, all within a close hierarchy of scales. When combined with the inherent multimode complexity of optical fields, such hybrid quantum-classical dynamics present theoretical, experimental, and engineering challenges to the contemporary framework of quantum optics. In this review, we highlight the unique physics that emerges in multimode nonlinear optics at the mesoscale and outline key principles for exploiting both classical and quantum features to engineer novel functionalities. We briefly survey the experimental landscape and draw attention to outstanding technical challenges in materials, dispersion engineering, and device design for accessing mesoscopic operation. Finally, we speculate on how these capabilities might usher in some new paradigms in quantum photonics, from quantum-augmented information processing to nonclassical-light-driven dynamics and phenomena to all-optical non-Gaussian measurement and sensing. The physics unlocked at the mesoscale present significant challenges and opportunities in theory and experiment alike, and this review is intended to serve as a guide to navigating this new frontier in ultrafast quantum nonlinear optics.
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The Virtual Quantum Optics Laboratory
We present a web-based software tool, the Virtual Quantum Optics Laboratory (VQOL), that may be used for designing and executing realistic simulations of quantum optics experiments. A graphical user interface allows one to rapidly build and configure a variety of different optical experiments, while the runtime environment provides unique capabilities for visualization and analysis. All standard linear optical components are available as well as sources of thermal, coherent, and entangled Gaussian states. A unique aspect of VQOL is the introduction of non-Gaussian measurements using detectors modeled as deterministic devices that "click" when the amplitude of the light falls above a given threshold. We describe the underlying theoretical models and provide some illustrative examples. We find that VQOL provides a faithful representation of many experimental quantum optics phenomena and may serve as both a useful instructional tool for students as well as a valuable research tool for practitioners.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1842086
- PAR ID:
- 10381130
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 2022 IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering (QCE)
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 677-687
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1109/QCE53715.2022.00091
