Measurement-based quantum computing, a powerful alternative to the standard circuit model, proceeds using only local adaptive measurements on a highly entangled resource state of many spins on a graph or lattice. Along with the canonical cluster state, the valence-bond solid ground state on a chain of spin-1 particles, studied by Affleck, Kennedy, Lieb, and Tasaki (AKLT), is such a resource state. We propose a simulation of this AKLT state using linear optics, wherein we can make use of the high-fidelity projective measurements that are commonplace in quantum-optical experiments, and describe how quantum logic gates can be performed on this chain. In our proposed implementation, the spin-1 particles comprising the AKLT state are encoded on polarization biphotons: three-level systems consisting of pairs of polarized photons in the same spatio-temporal mode. A logical qubit encoded on the photonic AKLT state can be initialized, read out, and have an arbitrary single-qubit unitary applied to it by performing projective measurements on the constituent biphotons. For MBQC, biphoton measurements are required which cannot be deterministically performed using only linear optics and photodetection.
