Nonlinear Photonics for Room-Temperature Quantum Metrology and Information Processing

Photons are robust carriers of quantum information as they can propagate long distances without losing quantum entanglement and coherence. Compared to quantum information in matter-based carriers, such as superconducting oscillators, trapped ions and atoms, quantum dots, and vacancy centers in crystals, the photonic quantum states are robust against perturbations from the environment, such as parasitic electromagnetic fields and thermal fluctuations (phonons), making it an ideal candidate for room-temperature-based quantum metrology and information processing applications. Such robustness is due to photon-photon scattering in the vacuum being extremely improbable and photon-atom interactions being in the linear regime for most materials. Nevertheless, photon-photon or photon-atom nonlinear interactions are also critical for all quantum photonic applications as nonlinearity is required for generating non-classical states of light. Furthermore, nonlinear interactions greatly expand the variety of Hamiltonian that can be engineered for a given system or subsystem, which is a direct measure of the system's functionality. Thus, the ability to engineer nonlinear interactions has been one