Shaping a single photon without interacting with it

Abstract: Complete control over the properties of light up to the level of single photons is an invaluable tool for quantum information science and fundamental studies of light-matter interaction. The crucial prerequisite is the ability to create a spatio-temporal distribution of single-photon electromagnetic field with the desired characteristics, i.e. to shape a photon by design. Despite the ever-growing demand for tuneable single-photon sources, there is a lack of practical, efficient and scalable methods for photon shaping. Here we put forward a novel generic method that enables lossless shaping of single photons with respect to any degree of freedom or several degrees of freedom simultaneously. Shaping is performed in a heralded manner, which ensures flexibility and scalability of the scheme. Our method can be directly integrated with the current technologies: this enables experimental realization of numerous proposals involving shaped single photons and opens up qualitatively new opportunities in the future.