Special Physics Seminar

Ultrafast quantum photonics: from communication to sensing

Frédéric Bouchard

National Research Council of Canada

The temporal degree of freedom of photons is one of the most promising platforms in quantum photonics. In particular, temporal encoding of quantum information is robust to environmental disturbances, supports large processing rates, and can be used in high-dimensional schemes. Here, we explore a new regime where information is encoded in the superposition of time bins at the picosecond level, known as ultrafast time-bins. This is done by leveraging well-established ultrafast optical techniques to develop novel generation, manipulation, and detection schemes for temporal states of light. Ultrafast time-bins thus offer a new platform for performing quantum information processing tasks, such as quantum communication, simulation, computation, and sensing, with a potential for enhanced phase stability, larger rates, scalability, and improved noise tolerance.