Non-Gaussian-state generation with time-gated photon detection

Abstract

Non-Gaussian states of light, which are essential in fault-tolerant and universal optical quantum computation, are typically generated by a heralding scheme using photon detectors. Recently, it has been theoretically shown that the large timing jitter of the photon detectors deteriorates the purity of the generated non-Gaussian states [T. Sonoyama et al., Phys. Rev. A 105, 043714 (2022)2469-992610.1103/PhysRevA.105.043714]. Here, we circumvent this problem by time-gated photon detection and generate non-Gaussian states with Wigner negativity using continuous-wave light. We use a fast optical switch for time gating to effectively improve the timing jitter of a photon-number-resolving detector based on a transition edge sensor from 50 ns to 10 ns. As a result, we generate non-Gaussian states with Wigner negativity of −0.011±0.004 (ℏ=1), which cannot be observed without the time-gated photon detection method. These results confirm the effect of the timing jitter on non-Gaussian state generation experimentally for the first time. The proposed time-gated photon detection method would be useful for high-purity non-Gaussian state preparation in optical quantum information processing.