Decoherence-induced Multiphoton Interference

Quantum Physics [Submitted on 7 Apr 2026] Decoherence-induced Multiphoton Interference Yifan Du, Jiuyi Zhang, Daniel López Martínez, Misagh Izadi, Yuping Huang Decoherence is usually deemed detrimental to quantum information processing. Its control and minimization require significant costs and operating overheads, constituting a major hurdle to commercialize quantum technology. Yet, quantum mechanics provides for counterintuitive, sometimes surprisingly useful, phenomena and effects associated with decoherence, leading to unusual practical utilities. Here we demonstrate such an example of fundamental interest and practical potential, where genuine quantum interference is created among multiple photons through their dissipative coupling to a shared reservoir. On a thin-film lithium niobate chip, we incoherently link two spontaneous parametric down-converters through a common, highly-lossy channel to create coherent multiphoton states. Our results show that faithful correlations can be established among two, three, and four photons, and tuned by shifting the relative phase between the driving pumps for the converters. This experiment highlights an under-explored territory in quantum science and technology, where loss and decoherence serve as resources, rather than adversaries, for quantum information processing. Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Optics (physics.optics) Cite as: arXiv:2604.05422 [quant-ph]   (or arXiv:2604.05422v1 [quant-ph] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2604.05422 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Yifan Du [view email] [v1] Tue, 7 Apr 2026 04:35:30 UTC (3,000 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: quant-ph < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-04 Change to browse by: physics physics.optics References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)