Linear-nonlinear duality for circuit design on quantum computing platforms

Abstract

Beam splitters (BSs) and optical parametric amplifiers (OPAs) can be described using Lie groups $SU(2)$ and $SU(1,1)$. Here, we show that the dynamical trajectories of these devices are connected via a Wick rotation on their respective group manifolds. This yields an exact amplitude-level duality between BSs of transmittance $\eta$ and OPAs of gain $g=1/\eta$. This geometric correspondence admits a compact tensor-network formulation, which we use to construct a circuit-model protocol that reproduces PDC transition amplitudes. This construction naturally leads to finite-dimensional, truncated PDC unitaries that exactly reproduce the first $q$ amplitudes of an ideal parametric amplifier. Our results demonstrate that key amplitude-level features of nonlinear optical processes can be simulated using only native single-qubit unitaries and measurement-based primitives on existing digital quantum hardware. This extends PDC-inspired entanglement-generation mechanisms beyond photonic architectures.