Experimental aspects of indefinite causal order in quantum mechanics

Author(s)
Lee A. Rozema, Teodor Strömberg, Huan Cao, Yu Guo, Bi Heng Liu, Philip Walther
Abstract

In the past decade, the toolkit of quantum information has been expanded to include processes in which the basic operations do not have definite causal relations. Originally considered in the context of the unification of quantum mechanics and general relativity, these causally indefinite processes have been shown to offer advantages in a wide variety of quantum-information processing tasks, ranging from quantum computation to quantum metrology. Here, we overview these advantages and the experimental efforts to realize them. We survey both the experimental techniques employed and the theoretical methods developed in support of the experiments, before discussing the interpretations of current experimental results and giving an outlook on the future of the field.

Organisation(s)
Quantum Optics, Quantum Nanophysics and Quantum Information, Research Network Quantum Aspects of Space Time
External organisation(s)
University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften (ÖAW)
Journal
Nature Reviews Physics
Volume
6
Pages
483–499
No. of pages
17
ISSN
2522-5820
DOI
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2405.00767
Publication date
08-2024
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
103025 Quantum mechanics, 103026 Quantum optics
ASJC Scopus subject areas
General Physics and Astronomy
Portal url
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/d53c9908-11a6-493d-a143-2d8afc47cf08