We experimentally demonstrate PT-symmetric optical lattices with periodical gain and loss profiles in a coherently prepared four-level N-type atomic system. By appropriately tuning the pertinent atomic parameters, the onset of PT-symmetry breaking is observed through measuring an abrupt phase-shift jump between adjacent gain and loss waveguides. The experimental realization of such a readily reconfigurable and effectively controllable PT-symmetric waveguide array structure sets a new stage for further exploiting and better understanding the peculiar physical properties of these non-Hermitian systems in atomic settings.

We present a simple architecture for deterministic quantum circuits operating on single photon qubits. Few resources are necessary to implement two elementary gates and can be recycled for computing with large numbers of qubits. The deterministic realization of some key multi-qubit gates, such as the Fredkin and Toffoli gate, is greatly simplified in this approach.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev.

Weak cross-Kerr nonlinearities between single photons and coherent states are the basis for many applications in quantum-information processing. These nonlinearities have so far mainly been discussed in terms of highly idealized single-mode models. We develop a general theory of the interaction between continuous-mode photonic pulses and apply it to the case of a single photon interacting with a coherent state. We quantitatively study the validity of the usual single-mode approximation using the concepts of fidelity and conditional phase. We show that high fidelities, nonzero conditional phases, and high photon numbers are compatible, under conditions where the pulses fully pass through each other and where unwanted transverse-mode effects are suppressed.

Multi-photon states are widely applied in quantum information technology. By the methods presented in this paper, the structure of a multi-photon state in the form of multiple single photon qubit product can be mapped to a single photon qudit, which could also be in separable product with other photons. This makes the possible manipulation of such multi-photon states in the way of processing single photon states. The optical realization of unknown qubit discrimination [B. He, J. A. Bergou, and Y.-H. Ren, Phys. Rev. A 76, 032301 (2007)] is simplified with the transformation methods. Another application is the construction of quantum logic gates, where the inverse transformations back to the input state spaces are also necessary. We especially show that the modified setups to implement the transformations can realize the deterministic multi-control gates (including Toffoli gate) operating directly on the products of single photon qubits.

We propose a scheme for realizing quantum repeaters with Rydberg-blockade coupled atomic ensembles, based on a recently proposed collective encoding strategy. Rydberg-blockade mediated two-qubit gates and efficient cooperative photon emission are employed to create ensemble-photon entanglement. Thanks to deterministic entanglement swapping operations via Rydberg-based two-qubit gates, and to the suppression of multi-excitation errors by the blockade effect, the entanglement distribution rate of the present scheme is higher by orders of magnitude than the rates achieved by other ensemble-based repeaters. We also show how to realize temporal multiplexing with this system, which offers an additional speedup in entanglement distribution.