Versatile quantum-enabled telecom receiver

Abstract

We experimentally demonstrate a quantum-measurement-based receiver for a range of modulation schemes and alphabet lengths in a telecom C-band. We attain symbol error rates below the shot noise limit for all the studied modulation schemes and the alphabet lengths 4≤M≤16. In doing so, we achieve the record energy sensitivity for telecom receivers. We investigate the trade-off between energy and bandwidth use and its dependence on the alphabet length. We identify the combined (energy and bandwidth) resource efficiency as a figure of merit and experimentally confirm that the quantum-inspired hybrid frequency/phase encoding has the highest combined resource efficiency.