Photonic techniques for quantum dynamics: open systems and light-matter interaction

In this manuscript I show a selection of the principal theoretical and experimental studies developed in my PhD in Physics, working on quantum information and quantum optics. Here one can find four chapters of theory; ranging from linear algebra, quantum mechanics, quantum optics, open quantum systems, cavity electrodynamics, light-matter coupling to quantum walks; another chapter includes a series of experimental results and future proposals related with the presented background theory; and one final chapter containing the principal conclusions of those studies. All these experiments where designed and performed to show the feasibility of bulk optics quantum simulations for future control and computing protocols, based on pure linear or non-linear operations. In particular I show the practical implementation of two techniques for the reduction of decoherence in entanglement-breaking channels, increasing the possible length of the transmission lines; an experimental certification of a new protocol to measure the minimal quantum channel capacity for any unknown kind of channel; experimental evidence of non-Markovian dynamics for an evolution with null information back-flow, but non complete-positive divisibility; a versatile bulk optics simulator of discrete quantum open evolutions, capable of reproduce a variety of Markovian and non-Markovian dynamics; I show also experimental evidence of entanglement between one polariton and one photon, and a decoherence effect when the polariton population is increased, showing a new collective non-linear phenomenon; finally I present a modified version of the bulk optics simulator to reproduce unstudied quantum walks of 1-dimensional lattices.