Category: PhoQus
Two-flux tunable Aharonov-Bohm caging in a photonic lattice
We study the Aharonov-Bohm caging effect in a one-dimensional lattice of theta-shaped units defining a chain of interconnected plaquettes, each one threaded by two synthetic flux lines. In the proposed system, light trapping results from the destructive interference of waves propagating along three arms, this implies that the caging effect is tunable and it can be controlled by changing the tunnel couplings J. These features reflect on the diffraction pattern allowing to establish a clear connection between the lattice topology and the resulting AB interference.
Experiments on adiabatic evolution in Ising machines in Optica
Combinatorial optimization problems are crucial for widespread applications but remain difficult to solve on a large scale with conventional hardware. Novel optical platforms, known as coherent or photonic Ising machines, are attracting considerable attention as accelerators on optimization tasks formulable as Ising models. Annealing is a well-known technique based on adiabatic evolution for finding optimal solutions in classical and quantum systems made by atoms, electrons, or photons. Although various Ising machines employ annealing in some form, adiabatic computing on optical settings has been only partially investigated. Here, we realize the adiabatic evolution of frustrated Ising models with 100 spins programmed by spatial light modulation. We use holographic and optical control to change the spin couplings adiabatically, and exploit experimental noise to explore the energy landscape. Annealing enhances the convergence to the Ising ground state and allows to find the problem solution with probability close to unity. Our results demonstrate a photonic scheme for combinatorial optimization in analogy with adiabatic quantum algorithms and classical annealing methods but enforced by optical vector-matrix multiplications and scalable photonic technology.
https://www.osapublishing.org/optica/fulltext.cfm?uri=optica-7-11-1535&id=442147
See also https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.08690
Non-abelian Thouless pumping in a photonic lattice
Non-abelian gauge fields emerge naturally in the description of adiabatically evolving quantum systems having degenerate levels. Here we show that they also play a role in Thouless pumping in the presence of degenerate bands. To this end we consider a photonic Lieb lattice having two degenerate non-dispersive modes and we show that, when the lattice parameters are slowly modulated, the propagation of the photons bear the fingerprints of the underlying non-abelian gauge structure. The non-dispersive character of the bands enables a high degree of control on photon propagation. Our work paves the way to the generation and detection of non-abelian gauge fields in photonic and optical lattices.
Non-abelian gauge fields lie at the very heart of many modern physical theories. We need new experimental routes and observables to disclose the importance of the Wilczek and Zee holonomy. We have shown that properly
designed photonic lattices enable the control of the beam evolution by non-commutative fields. These lattices may lead to the direct observation of the quantization of the displacement due to a non-abelian Chern number. This work can be extended in several directions, including nonlinear effects or considering the propagation of non-classical light in non-abelian lattices. Both these possibilities are unexplored so far and open several new questions concerning – for example – the effect of the non-abelian holonomy on entanglement or the impact of nonlinearity in breaking the hidden symmetries. Non-abelian topological photonics may stimulate further developments and applications for classical and quantum information and tests of fundamental physics.
Brosco, Pilozzi, Fazio, and Conti, in https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.15159
Our “machine learning with nonlinear waves” paper featured in Physics!
Riding waves in Neuromorphic Computing, Marios Mattheakis highlights with a thoughtful viewpoint our recent paper in PRL on the artificial intelligence of nonlinear waves.