A measurement-induced optical Kerr interaction

Abstract

We present a method for implementing a weak optical Kerr interaction (single-mode Kerr Hamiltonian) in a measurement-based fashion using the common set of universal elementary interactions for continuous-variable quantum computation. Our scheme is a conceptually distinct alternative to the use of naturally occurring, weak Kerr nonlinearities or specially designed nonlinear media. Instead, we propose to exploit suitable offline prepared quartic ancilla states together with beam splitters, squeezers, and homodyne detectors. For perfect ancilla states and ideal operations, our decompositions for obtaining the measurement-based Kerr Hamiltonian lead to a realization with near-unit fidelity. Nonetheless, even by using only approximate ancilla states in the form of superposition states of up to four photons, high fidelities are still attainable. Our scheme requires four elementary operations and its deterministic implementation corresponds to about ten ancilla- based gate teleportations. We test our measurement-based Kerr interaction against an ideal Kerr Hamiltonian by applying them both to weak coherent states and single-photon superposition states.