Quantum Simulator Based on the Paraxial Wave Equation

Abstract

We propose a paraxial quantum simulator that requires only widely available optical fibers or metamaterials. Such a simulator would facilitate cost-effective quantum simulation without specialized techniques. We show theoretically that the method accurately simulates quantum dynamics and quantum effects for an example system, which invites extension of the method to many-body systems using nonlinear optical elements and implementation of the paraxial quantum simulator to extend access to quantum computation and prototype quantum parity-time reversal ($\mathcal{PT}$) symmetric technologies.