A single programmable photonic circuit for universal quantum measurements

Abstract

Programmable photonic quantum processors face a critical challenge: despite significant advances in quantum state preparation and manipulation, measurements remain limited to projective techniques. Here, we demonstrate a programmable measurement processor that overcomes this limitation by enabling arbitrary quantum measurements within a scalable circuit framework. Our large-scale integrated photonic architecture achieves precise coherent control of ancillary quantum systems, realizing a universal four-dimensional quantum measurement device. We benchmark the processor by performing measurement tomography on 100 randomly selected measurements, achieving an average fidelity of 97.7%. The processor's performance exceeds the theoretical limits of projective measurements in three key quantum information tasks: state discrimination (with 23 times lower error), state estimation (with 10.6% higher fidelity), and randomness generation (with 37% more randomness yield), demonstrating its high operational quality. This work establishes a fully programmable quantum measurement processor, advancing the development of universal quantum operations for photonic quantum information processing by providing the key missing component.