Using quantum computers to simulate single-photon Mach–Zehnder interferometers

Mach–Zehnder interferometers are commonly introduced in quantum mechanics instruction because they can be represented as two-state systems. With the availability of quantum computers in the cloud, we show how one can also simulate these experiments as perfect single-photon experiments, via quantum computer circuits. This simulation provides a great opportunity to bring quantum computation and single-quantum experiments into the physics classroom and to teach quantum computing via simulation rather than computer science-based algorithms.