Work

Simulating the photon statistics of multimode Gaussian states by automatic differentiation of generating functions

Year: 2023

Type: article

Abstract: Advances in photonics require photon-number resolved simulations of quantum optical experiments with Gaussian states. We demonstrate a simple and versatile method to simulate the photon statistics of general multimode Gaussian states. The derived generating functions enable simulations of the photon number distribution, cumulative probabilities, moments, and factorial moments of the photon statistics of Gaussian states as well as of multimode photon-added and photon-subtracted Gaussian states. Numerical results are obtained by the automatic differentiation of these generating functions by employing the software framework PyTorch. Our approach is particularly well suited for practical simulations of the photon statistics of quantum optical experiments in realistic scenarios with low photon numbers, in which various sources of imperfections have to be taken into account. As an example, we calculate the detection probabilities for a recent multipartite time-bin coding quantum key distribution setup and compare them with the corresponding experimental values.

Source: APL Photonics

DOI: 10.1063/5.0129638

Authors: Erik Fitzke, Florian Niederschuh, Thomas Walther

Institution: Technische Universität Darmstadt

Language: English

Topic: Quantum Information and Cryptography

Subfield: Artificial Intelligence

Field: Computer Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $2,750

Funder: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft