Plasmonic Quantum Walk in Gold Strip Parallel Waveguides

Quantum walks (QWs) simulate particle behaviors in the quantum mechanical regime, which exhibit time evolutions completely different from the classical (probabilistic) random works [1]. QWs offer quantum physical simulations and the novel approach to build quantum computers. Currently on-chip photonic devices implementing QWs have been intensively developed. QW photonic chips were realized using photonic circuits based on silica (SiO
₂
) waveguide platforms [1,2]. Here, we demonstrate a QW chip based on the other waveguide platform, namely the long-range surface plasmon polariton (LR-SPP) waveguide [3]. The LR-SPP waveguide allows a single-polarization mode, and has relatively low optical losses. Moreover, the LR-SPP waveguide platform will realize two-dimensional waveguide lattice structures with a high reliability. Thus, the LR-SPP waveguide is the potential platform to construct large-scale and high-dimension QW simulators.