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Miniature Lens Could Enable Fast Transfer of Quantum Information

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A tiny camera lens, invented by an international research team led by the Australian National University (ANU), could one day be used to link quantum computers to an optical fiber network. The lens is made of a silicon film with millions of nanostructures that form a transparent metasurface.

The team believes that the lens, which is 100 times thinner than a human hair, could enable the efficient detection and transmission of information encoded in quantum light, once quantum technology is fully realized.

Kai Wang holding a sample that has multiple metasurface camera lenses. Courtesy of Lannon Harley, ANU.
Kai Wang holding a sample that has multiple metasurface camera lenses. Courtesy of Lannon Harley, ANU.

The team demonstrated that its lens could image multiple projections of quantum states simultaneously with a single metasurface, thus enabling a robust reconstruction of multiphoton polarization-encoded states. One- and two-photon states were reconstructed through nonlocal photon correlation measurements with polarization-insensitive click detectors positioned after the metasurface. The scalability to higher photon numbers was established theoretically.

“It is the first of its kind to image several quantum particles of light at once, enabling the observation of their spooky behavior with ultrasensitive cameras,” said professor Andrey Sukhorukov.

Researcher Kai Wang said that one challenge was making a device for portable quantum technologies.

“Our device offers a compact, integrated and stable solution for manipulating quantum light,” he said. “It is fabricated with a similar kind of manufacturing technique used by Intel and NVIDIA for computer chips.”

The work shows that nonclassical multiphoton interferences can be achieved at the subwavelength scale in all-dielectric metasurfaces, and that it may be feasible to use ultrathin quantum metadevices to manipulate and measure multiphoton quantum states. The device could have applications in free-space quantum imaging and in quantum communications.

The research was published in Science (doi:10.1126/science.aat8196).
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Published: September 2018
Glossary
metalens
A metalens, short for "metasurface lens," is a type of optical lens that uses nanostructured materials to manipulate light at a subwavelength scale. Unlike traditional lenses made of glass or other transparent materials, metalenses do not rely on the curvature of their surface to refract or focus light. Instead, they use carefully engineered patterns of nanostructures, such as nanoscale antennas or dielectric structures, to control the phase and amplitude of light across the lens's surface....
quantum
The term quantum refers to the fundamental unit or discrete amount of a physical quantity involved in interactions at the atomic and subatomic scales. It originates from quantum theory, a branch of physics that emerged in the early 20th century to explain phenomena observed on very small scales, where classical physics fails to provide accurate explanations. In the context of quantum theory, several key concepts are associated with the term quantum: Quantum mechanics: This is the branch of...
Research & TechnologyAsia-PacificeducationAustralian National UniversityImaginglensescamerasmetasurfacemetalensquantummultiphoton interferenceTech Pulse

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