Digital Discovery of 100 diverse Quantum Experiments with PyTheus

Photonic technologies are main players in the second quantum revolution, promising better sensors, secure communications, and quantum-enhanced computation. Such endeavors require generating specific quantum states or efficiently performing quantum tasks. The design of the corresponding optical experiments, historically powered by human creativity, is being slowly automated with advanced algorithms, which exploit a graph-based representation of optical setups. Unfortunately, these tools are often restricted to very specific use cases and are difficult to generalize, which limits their practical implementation. To overcome these challenges, we developed PyTheus, a highly-efficient, open-source digital discovery framework that represents a wide range of experimental devices from modern quantum labs. PyTheus produces interpretable designs to solve complex experimental problems, like generating highly entangled quantum states or performing quantum communication protocols. Aiming for the simplest solutions, our software provides inspiration to human researchers, which can often generalize their findings to other systems. Therefore, we hope PyTheus will accelerate the development of quantum optics and related technologies.