The possibility of arbitrarily “adding” and “subtracting” single photons to and from a light field may give access to a complete engineering of quantum states and to fundamental quantum phenomena. We experimentally implemented simple alternated sequences of photon creation and annihilation on a thermal field and used quantum tomography to verify the peculiar character of the resulting light states. In particular, as the final states depend on the order in which the two actions are performed, we directly observed the noncommutativity of the creation and annihilation operators, one of the cardinal concepts of quantum mechanics, at the basis of the quantum behavior of light. These results represent a step toward the full quantum control of a field and may provide new resources for quantum information protocols.

The full structuration of light in the transverse plane, including intensity, phase and polarization, holds the promise of unprecedented capabilities for applications in classical optics as well as in quantum optics and information sciences. Harnessing special topologies can lead to enhanced focusing, data multiplexing or advanced sensing and metrology. Here we experimentally demonstrate the storage of such spatio-polarization-patterned beams into an optical memory. A set of vectorial vortex modes is generated via liquid crystal cell with topological charge in the optic axis distribution, and preservation of the phase and polarization singularities is demonstrated after retrieval, at the single-photon level. The realized multiple-degree-of-freedom memory can find applications in classical data processing but also in quantum network scenarios where structured states have been shown to provide promising attributes, such as rotational invariance.

We report the experimental realization and tomographic analysis of quantum light states obtained by exciting a classical thermal field by a single photon. Such states, although completely incoherent, possess a tunable degree of quantumness which is here exploited to put to a stringent experimental test some of the criteria proposed for the proof and the measurement of state nonclassicality. The quantum character of the states is also given in quantum information terms by evaluating the amount of entanglement that they can produce.

We observe and measure dispersive optical nonlinearities in an ensemble of cold Rydberg atoms placed inside an optical cavity. The experimental results are in agreement with a simple model where the optical nonlinearities are due to the progressive appearance of a Rydberg blockaded volume within the medium. The measurements allow a direct estimation of the ``blockaded fraction'' of atoms within the atomic ensemble.

Quantum reservoir computing aims at harnessing the rich dynamics of quantum systems for machine-learning purposes. It can be used for online time series processing while having a remarkably low training cost. Here, we establish the potential of continuous-variable Gaussian states of linear dynamical systems for quantum reservoir computing. We prove that Gaussian resources are enough for universal reservoir computing. We find that encoding the input into Gaussian states is both a source and a means to tune the nonlinearity of the overall input-output map. We further show that the full potential of the proposed model can be reached by encoding to quantum fluctuations, such as squeezed vacuum, instead of classical fields or thermal fluctuations. Our results introduce a research paradigm for reservoir computing harnessing quantum systems and engineered Gaussian quantum states.

We present the experimental realization of a scheme, based on single-photon interference, for implementing superpositions of distinct quantum operations. Its application to a thermal light field (a well-categorized classical entity) illustrates quantum superposition from a new standpoint and provides a direct and quantitative verification of the bosonic commutation relation between creation and annihilation operators. By shifting the focus towards operator superpositions, this result opens interesting alternative perspectives for manipulating quantum states.