Scalable generation of macroscopic Fock states exceeding 10,000 photons

The scalable preparation of bosonic quantum states with macroscopic excitations poses a fundamental challenge in quantum technologies, limited by control complexity and photon-loss rates that severely constrain prior theoretical and experimental efforts to merely dozens of excitations per mode. Here, based on the duality of the quantum state evolution in Fock state space and the optical wave-function propagation in a waveguide array, we introduce a Kerr-engineered multi-lens protocol in a single bosonic mode to deterministically generate Fock states exceeding $10,000$ photons. By optimizing phase and displacement operations across lens groups, our approach compensates for non-paraxial aberrations, achieving fidelities above $73\%$ in numerical simulations for photon numbers up to $N=100,000$. Counterintuitively, the protocol's execution time scales as $N^{-1/2}$ with the target photon number $N$, exhibiting robustness against the photon loss. Our framework enables exploration of quantum-to-classical transitions of giant Fock states, paving the way for advanced quantum metrology with significant quantum gains, and error-corrected quantum information processing in high-dimensional Hilbert spaces.

Authors

Publication Details

Journal
Physical Review Letters
Published
2026-11-02
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1103/plv9-bn9t
Citations
1
Primary Topic
Quantum Information and Cryptography
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
2.32

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article

Scalable generation of macroscopic Fock states exceeding 10,000 photons

Yifang Xu, Weizhou Cai, Ziyue Hua, Xu‐Bo Zou et al.
1 citations
Physical Review Letters
Quantum Information and Cryptography
2.32
article

Scalable generation of macroscopic Fock states exceeding 10,000 photons

Yifang Xu, Weizhou Cai, Ziyue Hua, Xu‐Bo Zou, Luyan Sun, Yilong Zhou, Ming Li, Zi-Jie Chen, Chang-Ling Zou, Guang-Can Guo
article en
1 citations

Abstract

The scalable preparation of bosonic quantum states with macroscopic excitations poses a fundamental challenge in quantum technologies, limited by control complexity and photon-loss rates that severely constrain prior theoretical and experimental efforts to merely dozens of excitations per mode. Here, based on the duality of the quantum state evolution in Fock state space and the optical wave-function propagation in a waveguide array, we introduce a Kerr-engineered multi-lens protocol in a single bosonic mode to deterministically generate Fock states exceeding $10,000$ photons. By optimizing phase and displacement operations across lens groups, our approach compensates for non-paraxial aberrations, achieving fidelities above $73\%$ in numerical simulations for photon numbers up to $N=100,000$. Counterintuitively, the protocol's execution time scales as $N^{-1/2}$ with the target photon number $N$, exhibiting robustness against the photon loss. Our framework enables exploration of quantum-to-classical transitions of giant Fock states, paving the way for advanced quantum metrology with significant quantum gains, and error-corrected quantum information processing in high-dimensional Hilbert spaces.

Physical Review Letters
National Natural Science Foundation of China, University of Science and Technology of China, National Science and Technology Major Project, Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities
Openalex Percentile: Top 15%
Quantum Information and Cryptography
2.32
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Scalable generation of macroscopic Fock states exceeding 10,000 photons — Yifang Xu, Weizhou Cai, et al. · Physical Review Letters (2026) | TGRS Research Map | TGRS