Francesco Di Colandrea, PhD

Francesco Di Colandrea obtained his PhD in 2023 at the University of Naples Federico II, with a thesis on Spin-orbit photonics for quantum simulations with structured light under the supervision of Prof. Lorenzo Marrucci and Dr. Filippo Cardano. His research focused on photonic simulations of quantum walk dynamics, with particular regard to their applications to topological photonics. One of the main achievements of his PhD is the development of a compact liquid-crystal-based photonic platform which allows for the simulation of extreme regimes of quantum dynamics, such as ultra-long quantum walks. He joined the SQO group in Ottawa as a postdoctoral researcher, where he mostly worked on quantum simulations, open systems, and the application of machine-learning techniques to optical experiments.

Publications:

A. D’Errico, F. Di Colandrea, R. Barboza, A. Dauphin, M. Lewenstein, P. Massignan, L. Marrucci, and F. Cardano, “Bulk detection of time-dependent topological transitions in quenched chiral models,” Physical Review Research 2, 023119 (2020).
F. Di Colandrea, A. D’Errico, M. Maffei, H. M. Price, M. Lewenstein, L. Marrucci, F. Cardano, A. Dauphin, and P. Massignan, “Linking topological features of the Hofstadter model to optical diffraction figures,” New Journal of Physics 24, 013028 (2022).
C. Esposito, M. R. Barros, A. D. Hernandez, G. Carvacho, F. Di Colandrea, R. Barboza, F. Cardano, N. Spagnolo, L. Marrucci, and F. Sciarrino, “Quantum walks of two correlated photons in a 2D synthetic lattice,” npj Quantum Information 8, 34 (2022).
F. Di Colandrea, A. Babazadeh, A. Dauphin, P. Massignan, L. Marrucci, and F. Cardano, “Ultra-long quantum walks via spin-orbit photonics,” Optica 10, 324 (2023).
F. Di Colandrea, L. Amato, R. Schiattarella, A. Dauphin, and F. Cardano, “Retrieving space-dependent polarization transformations via near-optimal quantum process tomography,” Optics Express 31, 20 (2023).
C. Esposito, F. Di Colandrea, F. Hoch, G. Carvacho, F. Cardano, N. Spagnolo, L. Marrucci, F. Sciarrino, “Generation of high-dimensional qudit quantum states via two-dimensional quantum walks,” Physical Review Research 5, 043025 (2023).
A. Sit, F. Di Colandrea, A. D’Errico, E. Karimi, “Spatially twisted liquid-crystal devices,” APL Photonics 9, 056112 (2024).
A. Sit, F. Di Colandrea, A. D’Errico, E. Karimi, “Genetic algorithm for the response of arbitrarily twisted nematic liquid crystals to an applied field,” Physical Review E 109, 054705 (2024).
F. Di Colandrea, N. Dehghan, A. D’Errico, E. Karimi, “Fourier Quantum Process Tomography,” npj Quantum Information 10, 49 (2024).
F. Di Colandrea, N. Dehghan, F. Cardano, A. D’Errico, E. Karimi, “Manifestation of the quantum metric in chiral lattice systems,” Communications Physics 7, 265 (2024).
T. Jaouni, F. Di Colandrea, L. Amato, F. Cardano, E. Karimi, “Process tomography of structured optical gates with convolutional neural networks,” Machine Learning: Science and Technology 5, 045071 (2024).
N. Dehghan, A. D’Errico, F. Di Colandrea, E. Karimi, “Biphoton state reconstruction via phase retrieval methods,” Optica 11, 8 (2024).
T. Jaouni, L. Scarfe, F. Bouchard, M. Krenn, K. Heshami, F. Di Colandrea, E. Karimi, “Predicting atmospheric turbulence for secure quantum communications in free space,” arXiv:2406.14768.
M. G. Ammendola, F. Di Colandrea, L. Marrucci, F. Cardano, “Large-scale spin-orbit photonic circuits in two dimensions,” arXiv:2406.08652.
F. Di Colandrea, T. Jaouni, J. Grace, D. Paneru, M. Arienzo, A. D’Errico, E. Karimi, “Engineering qubit dynamics in open systems with photonic synthetic lattices,” arXiv:2412.04701.
D. Paneru, F. Di Colandrea, A. D’Errico, E. Karimi, “Nonlocal transfer of high-dimensional unitary operations,” arXiv:2412.09768.
X. Gao, D. Paneru, F. Di Colandrea, Y. Zhang, E. Karimi, “Generation of the Complete Bell Basis via Hong-Ou-Mandel Interference,” arXiv:2412.14274.