Experimental demonstration of interaction-free all-optical switching via the quantum Zeno effect.

We experimentally demonstrate all-optical interaction-free switching using the quantum Zeno effect, achieving a high contrast of 35:1. The experimental data match a zero-parameter theoretical model for several different regimes of operation, indicating a good understanding of the switch's characteristics. We also discuss extensions of this work that will allow for significantly improved performance, and the integration of this technology onto chip-scale devices, which can lead to ultra-low-power all-optical switching, a long-standing goal with applications to both classical and quantum information processing.

Efficient optical quantum state engineering.

We discuss a novel method of efficiently producing multiphoton states using repeated spontaneous parametric down-conversion. Specifically, by attempting down-conversion several times, we can pseudodeterministically add photons to a mode, producing various several-photon states, e.g., Fock states and N00N states (number-path entangled states of the form |N(A), 0(B)>+|0(A), N(B)>). This scheme is exponentially more efficient than previous proposals; we discuss expected performance and experimental limitations.