Programmable recirculating bricks mesh architecture for quantum photonics

Quantum Physics [Submitted on 1 Apr 2026] Programmable recirculating bricks mesh architecture for quantum photonics Jacek Gosciniak General-purpose programmable photonic processors offer a flexible foundation for integrating various functionalities within a single chip. A two-dimensional hexagonal waveguide mesh of Mach Zehnder interferometers has been shown to have great potential in the field of microwave photonics. Additionally, they are a promising platform for the creation of unitary linear transformations, which are key elements in photonic neural networks, In this article, we expand the portfolio of available applications for recirculating bricks mesh architecture to quantum technologies. We will show that a single programmable optical system is capable of performing various functions depending on the requirements. In particular, we will focus in this work on boson sampling, a task that best demonstrates quantum advantage, as well as on tasks that enable the determination of photon indistinguishability, which plays a key role in photonic quantum technologies. We will also show that, in addition to spatial modes, the same optical system can be equally well-suited for work on temporal modes through the implementation of an appropriate number of loops. Comments: 15 pages, 6 figures Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Optics (physics.optics) Cite as: arXiv:2604.01369 [quant-ph]   (or arXiv:2604.01369v1 [quant-ph] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2604.01369 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Jacek Gosciniak [view email] [v1] Wed, 1 Apr 2026 20:24:27 UTC (1,252 KB) Access Paper: 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?)