Non-Gaussianity in the quantum parametric oscillator

Systems of coupled optical parametric oscillators (OPOs) forming an Ising machine are emerging as largescale simulators of the Ising model. The advances in computer science and nonlinear optics have triggered not only the physical realization of hybrid (electrooptical) or all-optical Ising machines, but also the demonstration of quantum-inspired algorithms boosting their performances. To date, the use of the quantum nature of parametrically generated light as a further resource for computation represents a major open issue. A key quantum feature is the non-Gaussian character of the system state across the oscillation threshold. In this paper, we perform an ab initio analysis of the emergence of non-Gaussianity in the single quantum OPO with an applied external field.We model the OPO by a Lindblad master equation, which is numerically solved by a first-principles method based on exact diagonalization. Non-Gaussianity is quantified by means of three different metrics: the Hilbert-Schmidt distance, quantum relative entropy, and photon distribution. Our findings reveal a nontrivial interplay between parametric drive and applied field: (i) the increasing pump monotonically enhances non-Gaussianity and (ii) the increasing field first sharpens non-Gaussianity, and then restores the Gaussian character of the state when above a threshold value. We also report a first-principles computation in the Fock space of the distance from the mixture of coherent states, a strongly nonclassical behavior that can play a significant role in the quantum parallel search for optimization.