- Open Access
Twisted light generates robust many-body states for practical quantum computing
APS Open Sci. 1, 000023 – Published 19 May, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/f4qc-3ckt
Abstract
Twisted light carries orbital angular momentum (OAM) and can drive excitations of confined, interacting electrons that are dark to uniform dipolar probes. Here, we show how this “beyond-Kohn's-theorem” optical channel can become a concrete control primitive for quantum computing. Correlation sectors in few-electron quantum dots—characterized by the relative angular momentum quantum number—form a tunable ladder of many-body states that are robust in the limited sense of symmetry-protected selection rules and persistent chiral spectroscopic fingerprints; full topological gap protection requires three or more electrons. A twisted-light pulse with prescribed OAM index and polarization provides fast optical write, read, and scalable addressing of these sectors via the selection rule . In the analytically solvable Calogero () interaction limit, both the energy spectrum and the twisted-light matrix elements are closed-form functions of the interaction strength, allowing gate parameters (Rabi frequency, qubit frequency, anharmonicity, and leakage rates) to be written down explicitly. We map these results onto a universal single-qubit gate set, propose a concrete two-qubit entangling mechanism via state-dependent Coulomb coupling between adjacent dots, and identify the dominant decoherence channel (quadrupolar charge noise). A semianalytic extension using the expansion provides a design-level scaffold for the topological roadmap, including quasihole sector addressing. The central operational message is that twisted light enables WRITE (pulse-create a correlation sector), READ (spectroscopically diagnose correlations), and SCALE (optical addressing via spatial light modulator) in a unified photonic control layer. Throughout, screened and Coulomb interactions preserve the same qualitative chiral fingerprints established in the solvable limit.
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
Article Text
References (23)
- L. Allen, M. W. Beijersbergen, R. J. C. Spreeuw, and J. P. Woerdman, Orbital angular momentum of light and the transformation of Laguerre–Gaussian laser modes, Phys. Rev. A 45, 8185 (1992).
- A. Afanasev, C. E. Carlson, and A. Mukherjee, Two properties of twisted-light absorption, J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 31, 2721 (2014).
- G. F. Quinteiro and J. Berakdar, Electric currents induced by twisted light in quantum rings, Opt. Express 17, 20465 (2009).
- N. F. Johnson, Quantum-dot excitation spectrum: Laughlin-like states, Phys. Rev. B 46, 2636(R), (1992).
- R. B. Laughlin, Anomalous quantum Hall effect: An incompressible quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations, Phys. Rev. Lett. 50, 1395 (1983).
- S. M. Reimann and M. Manninen, Electronic structure of quantum dots, Rev. Mod. Phys. 74, 1283 (2002).
- C. Nayak, S. H. Simon, A. Stern, M. Freedman, and S. Das Sarma, Non-Abelian anyons and topological quantum computation, Rev. Mod. Phys. 80, 1083 (2008).
- A. Yu Kitaev, Fault-tolerant quantum computation by anyons, Ann. Phys. 303, 2 (2003).
- F. J. Rodríguez, L. Quiroga, and N. F. Johnson, Twisted light drives chiral excitations of interacting electrons in nanostructures with magnetic field, Phys. Rev. B 112, 115115 (2025).
- N. F. Johnson and L. Quiroga, Analytic results for particles with interaction in two dimensions and an external magnetic field, Phys. Rev. Lett. 74, 4277 (1995).
- A. González, L. Quiroga, and B. A. Rodríguez, Planar three-body problem with Calogero interactions and a magnetic field, Few-Body Syst. 21, 47 (1996).
- N. F. Johnson, F. J. Rodríguez, and L. Quiroga, Laughlin states, Vandermonde determinants, and quasihole excitations in few-electron systems: A pedagogical tutorial with explicit calculations, tutorial document (2025–2026).
- L. P. Kouwenhoven, D. G. Austing, and S. Tarucha, Few-electron quantum dots, Rep. Prog. Phys. 64, 701 (2001).
- S. C. Benjamin and N. F. Johnson, Entangled electronic states in multiple-quantum-dot systems, Phys. Rev. B 51, 14733 (1995).
- N. F. Johnson and S. C. Benjamin, Electron correlations and fractional quantum Hall states in a double-layer electron system, J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 7, L159 (1995).
- T. Hayashi, T. Fujisawa, H. D. Cheong, Y. H. Jeong, and Y. Hirayama, Coherent manipulation of electronic states in a double quantum dot, Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 226804 (2003).
- K. D. Petersson, J. R. Petta, H. Lu, and A. C. Gossard, Quantum coherence in a one-electron semiconductor charge qubit, Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 246804 (2010).
- J. K. Gamble, M. Friesen, S. N. Coppersmith, and X. Hu, Two-electron dephasing in single Si and GaAs quantum dots, Phys. Rev. B 86, 035302 (2012).
- P. Hawrylak and D. Pfannkuche, Magnetoluminescence from correlated electrons in quantum dots, Phys. Rev. Lett. 70, 485 (1993).
- P. J. Gambardella, Exact results in quantum many-body systems of interacting particles in many dimensions with as the dynamical group, J. Math. Phys. 16, 1172 (1975).
- M. Koch, D. M. Mittleman, J. Ornik, and E. Castro-Camus, Terahertz time-domain spectroscopy, Nat. Rev. Methods Primers 3, 48 (2023).
- Z. Zheng, K. Wang, H. Li, X. Meng, Y. Tian, and L. Song, High-repetition-rate strong-field terahertz source by optical rectification in DSTMS crystals, High Power Laser Sci. Eng. 12, e61 (2024).
- N. V. Petrov, B. Sokolenko, M. S. Kulya, A. Gorodetsky, and A. V. Chernykh, Design of broadband terahertz vector and vortex beams: I. Review of materials and components, Light: Adv. Manuf. 3, 43 (2022).