The scholarship offers a competitive stipend of AUD $41,650 per year for 3.5 years, a $15,000 training allowance, a $5,000 travel allowance, an $840 publication allowance and a one-off $5,000 cost-of-living payment. For Domestic students only.

Interference is a defining feature of quantum mechanics and an important resource in quantum information technologies. The well-known Hong-Ou-Mandel effect is perhaps the best-known example, where two indistinguishable photons (more generally, bosons) ‘conspire’ to never leave the two exit ports of a balanced beam splitter simultaneously. This is in contrast to two distinguishable photons, which behave as independent classical particles (‘boltzons’), each exiting the ports randomly with no such conspiracy.

Linear optical quantum circuits making use of bosonic interference were one of the first realisations of quantum computation, however mapping the evolution enabled by an interferometer, containing only linear elements, to a standard quantum circuit comprised of qubits is non-trivial.

Previous work by our group [Phys. Rev. A 97, 062329, Phys. Rev. A 98, 043839] established first quantised approaches to interpreting multimode, multiparticle scattering phenomena as quantum circuits. That work had immediate applications to non-universal models of computation such as Boson Sampling, and this project will expand the scope to look at a wider class of quantum optical protocols, universal models of quantum computation such as the KLM scheme [Nature 409 (6816): 46–52], as well as more recent developments in linear optical quantum computing.

Critically, the approach taken will allow admission of realistic noise mechanisms (such as loss and distinguishability in the case of photonics) into the circuit modelling. The intermediate area between perfectly indistinguishable and completely distinguishable particles is particularly interesting, giving rise to novel mathematical questions using techniques from quantum information and group representation theory that we will explore.

This project aligns strongly with Eigensystems’ strategic objectives around emulation of quantum computation. Specifically, in light of recent results regarding the use of quantum sampling in proof-of-work protocols [arxiv.org/abs/2305.19865], the development and analysis of models for emulating new photonic approaches to both universal and non-universal quantum computation is strategically important.
This project is part of the CSIRO Next Generation Quantum Graduates Program (NGQGP).