The intrinsic idea of superdense coding is to find as many gates as possible such that they can be perfectly discriminated. In this paper, we consider a new scheme of discrimination of quantum gates, called ancilla-assisted discrimination, in which a set of quantum gates on a $d-$dimensional system are perfectly discriminated with assistance from an $r-$dimensional ancilla system. The main contribution of the present paper is two-fold: (1) The number of quantum gates that can be discriminated in this scheme is evaluated. We prove that any $rd+1$ quantum gates cannot be perfectly discriminated with assistance from the ancilla, and there exist $rd$ quantum gates which can be perfectly discriminated with assistance from the ancilla. (2) The dimensionality of the minimal ancilla system is estimated. We prove that there exists a constant positive number $c$ such that for any $k\leq cr$ quantum gates, if they are $d$-assisted discriminable, then they are also $r$-assisted discriminable, and there are $c^{\prime}r\textrm{}(c^{\prime}>c)$ different quantum gates which can be discriminated with a $d-$dimensional ancilla, but they cannot be discriminated if the ancilla is reduced to an $r-$dimensional system. Thus, the order $O(r)$ of the number of quantum gates that can be discriminated with assistance from an $r-$dimensional ancilla is optimal. The results reported in this paper represent a preliminary step toward understanding the role ancilla system plays in discrimination of quantum gates as well as the power and limit of superdense coding.
We propose a general description on the unambiguous discrimination of mixed states according to the system-environment coupling, and present a procedure to reduce this to a standard semidefinite programming problem. In the two states case, we introduce the canonical vectors and partly simplify the problem to the case of discrimination between pairs of canonical vectors. By considering the positivity of the two by two matrices, we obtain a series of new upper bounds of the total success probability which depends on both the prior probabilities and specific state structures.
We propose a framework to analyze linear optical circuits based on an analogy with stabilizer formalism in quantum circuits, which provides efficiently computable formulas related to state discriminations. Hence, we analyze a Bell-state discrimination scheme with linear optics and ancillary single photons. With an increasing number of ancilla photons, the success probability of Bell-state discrimination has a maximum of $\frac{403}{512} \simeq 0.787$ at $28$ ancilla photons. By contrast, the corresponding two-qubit measurement asymptotically approaches a maximally entangling measurement.
Single-shot quantum channel discrimination is a fundamental task in quantum information theory. It is well known that entanglement with an ancillary system can help in this task, and furthermore that an ancilla with the same dimension as the input of the channels is always sufficient for optimal discrimination of two channels. A natural question to ask is whether the same holds true for the output dimension. That is, in cases when the output dimension of the channels is (possibly much) smaller than the input dimension, is an ancilla with dimension equal to the output dimension always sufficien…
We show that how a recent experiment of quantum imaging with undetected photons can basically be described as a (partial) ancilla-assisted process tomography. We propose a simplified quantum circuit version of this scenario, which also enables to recast quantum imaging in quantum computation language. Our analogy and analysis may help better understand the role of classical and/or quantum correlations in imaging experiments.
We propose and demonstrate a novel method to generate a large-amplitude coherent-state superposition (CSS) via ancilla-assisted photon-subtraction. The ancillary mode induces quantum interference of indistinguishable processes, widening the controllability of quantum superposition at the conditional output. We demonstrate the concept in the time domain, by a simple time-separated two-photon subtraction from cw squeezed light. We observe the largest CSS ever reported without any corrections, which will enable various quantum information applications with CSS states.
We study interferometry with Gaussian states and show that an ancilla-assisted scheme outperforms coherent state interferometry for all levels of loss. We also compare the ancilla-assisted scheme to other interferometric schemes involving squeezing, and show that it is the most advantage in the high-loss, high photon-number regime. In fact, in the presence of high loss, it out-performs many other strategies proposed to date. We find the optimal measurement observable for each scheme discussed. We also find that with the appropriate measurement, the achievable precision of the proposal by Caves…
In order to make a unified treatment for estimation problems of a very small noise or a very weak signal in a quantum process, we introduce the notion of a low-noise quantum channel with one noise parameter. It is known in several examples that prior entanglement together with nonlocal output measurement improves the performance of the channel estimation. In this paper, we study this ``ancilla-assisted enhancement'' for estimation of the noise parameter in a general low-noise channel. For channels on two level systems we prove that the enhancement factor, the ratio of the Fisher information of…
The standard method of Quantum State Tomography (QST) relies on the measurement of a set of noncommuting observables, realized in a series of independent experiments. Ancilla Assisted QST (AAQST) proposed by Nieuwenhuizen and co-workers (Phys. Rev. Lett., 92, 120402 (2004)) greatly reduces the number of independent measurements by exploiting an ancilla register in a known initial state. In suitable conditions AAQST allows mapping out density matrix of an input register in a single experiment. Here we describe methods for explicit construction of AAQST experiments in multi-qubit registers. We a…
We report an experiment in which the moments of spatial coordinates of down-converted photons are measured directly, without having to reconstruct any marginal probability distributions. We use a spatial light modulator to couple the spatial degrees of freedom and the polarization of the fields, which act as ancilla systems. Information about the spatial correlations is obtained via measurements on the ancilla qubits. Among other applications, this new method provides a more efficient technique to identify continuous variable entanglement.
We investigated the minimum achievable bit error rate of discriminating binary coherent states by homodyne measurements with the help of arbitrary ancilla states coupled via beam splitters. We took into account arbitrary pure ancillary states those were updated in real-time by those partial measurements and classical feedforward operations where the partial measurements were made by homodyne detections with a common fixed phase. It was shown that the minimum bit error rate of the system was invariant under these operations. We also discussed how generalize the homodyne detection beyond the sch…
Quantum ensembles form easily accessible architectures for studying various phenomena in quantum physics, quantum information science, and spectroscopy. Here we review some recent protocols for measurements in quantum ensembles by utilizing ancillary systems. We also illustrate these protocols experimentally via nuclear magnetic resonance techniques. In particular, we shall review noninvasive measurements, extracting expectation values of various operators, characterizations of quantum states, and quantum processes, and finally quantum noise engineering.
We quantify the usefulness of a bipartite quantum state in the ancilla-assisted channel discrimination of arbitrary quantum channels, formally defining a worst-case-scenario channel discrimination power for bipartite quantum states. We show that such a quantifier is deeply connected with the operator Schmidt decomposition of the state. We compute the channel discrimination power exactly for pure states, and provide upper and lower bounds for general mixed states. We show that highly entangled states can outperform any state that passes the realignment criterion for separability. Furthermore, w…
It has been demonstrated that the optimal sensitivity achievable with Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states is the same as that with uncorrelated probes in the frequency estimation in the presence of uncorrelated Markovian dephasing [S. F. Huelga, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 79, 3865 (1997)]. Here, we extend this issue by examining the optimal frequency sensitivities achievable by the use of ancilla-assisted strategy, which has been proposed recently for robust phase estimation. We present the ultimate frequency sensitivities bounded by the quantum Fisher information for a general case in the presen…
Complete and precise characterization of a quantum dynamical process can be achieved via the method of quantum process tomography. Using a source of correlated photons, we have implemented several methods investigating a wide range of processes, e.g., unitary, decohering, and polarizing. One of these methods, ancilla-assisted process tomography (AAPT), makes use of an additional ``ancilla system,'' and we have theoretically determined the conditions when AAPT is possible. All prior schemes for AAPT make use of entangled states. Our results show that, surprisingly, entanglement is not required …
In the last decade Grice and Ewert and van Loock found linear optical networks achieving near-unit efficiency unambiguous Bell state discrimination, when fed with increasingly complex ancillary states. However, except for the vacuum ancilla case, the optimality of these schemes is unknown. Here, the optimality of these networks is investigated through analytical and numerical means. We show an analytical upper bound to the success probability for interferometers that preserve the polarization of the input photons, saturated by both Grice's and Evert-van Loock's strategies. Furthermore, such an…
The metrological ability of carefully designed probes can be spoilt by the presence of noisy processes occurring during their evolution. The noise is responsible for altering the evolution of the probes in such a way that bear little or no information on the parameter of interest, hence spoiling the signal-to-noise ratio of any possible measurement. Here we show an experiment in which the introduction of an ancilla improves the estimation of an optical phase in the high-noise regime. The advantage is realised by the coherent coupling of the probe and the ancilla at the initialisation and the m…
Work is an observable quantity associated with a process, however there is no Hermitian operator associated with its measurement. We consider an ancilla-assisted protocol measuring the work done on a quantum system driven by a time-dependent Hamiltonian via two von-Neumann measurements of the system's energy carried out by a measuring apparatus modeled as a free particle of finite localization and interaction time with the system. We consider system Hamiltonians which both commute and do not commute at different times, finding corrections to fluctuation relations like the Jarzynski equality an…
We make use of local operations with two ancilla bits to deterministically distinguish all the four Bell states, without affecting the quantum channel containing these Bell states.
While a bit is the fundamental unit of binary classical information, a qubit is the fundamental unit of quantum information. In quantum information processing (QIP), it is customary to call the qubits under study as system qubits, and the additional qubits as ancillary qubits. In this thesis, I describe various schemes to exploit the ancillary qubits to efficiently perform many QIP tasks and their experimental demonstrations in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) systems. Particularly, we have showed that, in the presence of sufficient ancillary qubits, it is possible to completely characterize a…
A quantum measurement can be described by a set of matrices, one for each possible outcome, which represents the positive operator-valued measure (POVM) of the sensor. Efficient protocols of POVM extraction for arbitrary sensors are required. We present the first experimental POVM reconstruction that takes explicit advantage of a quantum resource, i.e., nonclassical correlations with an ancillary state. A POVM of a photon-number-resolving detector is reconstructed by using strong quantum correlations of twin beams generated by parametric down-conversion. Our reconstruction method is more stati…
It is shown that the dissonance, a quantum correlation which is equal to quantum discord for separable state, is required for assisted optimal state discrimination. We find that only one side discord is required in the optimal process of assisted state discrimination, while another side discord and entanglement is not necessary. We confirm that the quantum discord, which is asymmetric depending on local measurements, is a resource for assisted state discrimination. With the absence of entanglement, we give the necessary and sufficient condition for vanishing one side discord in assisted state …
Standard quantum process tomography on a $d$-dimensional input is performed by preparing several states of an input probe that then evolve under the action of the quantum channel corresponding to the progress. The final states of the probe are reconstructed by means of state tomography. An alternative is offered by ancilla-assisted process tomography: a single probe-ancilla state is used, and the correlations existing between probe and ancilla are exploited to fully reconstruct the information on the channel. In order for ancilla-assisted process tomography to be possible, the probe-ancilla in…
We study discrimination of m quantum measurements in the scenario when the unknown measurement with n outcomes can be used only once. We show that ancilla-assisted discrimination procedures provide a nontrivial advantage over simple (ancilla-free) schemes for perfect distinguishability and we prove that inevitably m <= n. We derive necessary and sufficient conditions of perfect distinguishability of general binary measurements. We show that the optimization of the discrimination of projective qubit measurements and their mixtures with white noise is equivalent to the discrimination of specific…
We report the experimental demonstration of a transmission scheme of photonic qubits over unstabilized optical fibers, which has the plug-and-play feature as well as the ability to transmit any state of a qubit, regardless of whether it is known, unknown, or entangled to other systems. A high fidelity to the noiseless quantum channel was achieved by adding an ancilla photon after the signal photon within the correlation time of the fiber noise and by performing quantum parity checking. Simplicity, maintenance-free feature and robustness against path-length mismatches among the nodes make our s…
A scheme for improving the sensitivity of quantum thermometry is proposed where the sensing quantum system used to recover the temperature of an external bath is dynamically coupled with an external ancilla (a meter) via a Hamiltonian term $\hat{H}_I$. At variance with previous approaches, our scheme relies neither on the presence of initial entanglement between the sensor and the meter, nor on the possibility of performing joint measurements on the two systems. The advantages we report arise from the fact that the presence of $\hat{H}_I$ interferes with the bath-sensor interaction, transformi…
Despite well-established no-go theorems on a perfect linear optical Bell state analyzer, we find a numerical trend that appears to approach a near-perfect measurement if we incorporate eight or more un-entangled ancilla photons into our device. Following this trend, we begin a promising inductive approach to building an ideal optical Bell measurement device. In the process, we determine that any Bell state analyzer that (even occasionally) bunches all photons into only two of the output modes cannot perform an ideal measurement and we find a set of conditions on our linear optical circuit that…
A system-ancilla bipartite state capable of containing the complete information of an unknown quantum channel acting on the system is called faithful. The equivalence between faithfulness of state and invertibility of the corresponding Jamiolkowski map proved by D'Ariano and Presti has been a useful characterization for ancilla-assisted process tomography albeit the proof was incomplete as they assumed trace nonincreasing quantum operations, not quantum channels. We complete the proof of the equivalence and introduce the generalization of faithfulness to various classes of quantum channels. We…
Quantum information processing using linear optics is challenging due to the limited set of deterministic operations achievable without using complicated resource-intensive methods. While techniques such as the use of ancillary photons can enhance the information processing capabilities of linear optical systems they are technologically demanding. Therefore, determining the constraints posed by linear optics and optimizing linear optical operations for specific tasks under those constraints, without the use of ancillas, can facilitate their potential implementation. Here, we consider the task …
We consider quantum-memory assisted protocols for discriminating quantum channels. We show that for optimal discrimination of memory channels, memory assisted protocols are needed. This leads to a new notion of distance for channels with memory. For optimal discrimination and estimation of sets of unitary channels memory-assisted protocols are not required.
Optimization of the mean efficiency for unambiguous (or error free)discrimination among $N$ given linearly independent nonorthogonal states should be realized in a way to keep the probabilistic quantum mechanical interpretation. This imposes a condition on a certain matrix to be positive semidefinite. We reformulated this condition in such a way that the conditioned optimization problem for the mean efficiency was reduced to finding an unconditioned maximum of a function defined on a unit $N$-sphere for equiprobable states and on an $N$-ellipsoid if the states are given with different probabil…
It is well known that one can extract all the information of an unknown quantum channel by means of quantum process tomography, such as standard quantum-process tomography and ancilla-assisted quantum process tomography (AAQPT). Furthermore, it has been shown that entanglement is not necessary for AAQPT, there exist separable states which are also useful for it. Surprisingly, in this work we find that not all entangled states are useful for AAQPT, there also exist some entangled states which are useless. The realignment operation used in entanglement detection can be related to the question wh…
We investigate optimal discrimination between two projective single-qubit measurements in a scenario where the measurement can be performed only once. We consider general setting involving a tunable fraction of inconclusive outcomes and we prove that the optimal discrimination strategy requires an entangled probe state for any nonzero rate of inconclusive outcomes. We experimentally implement this optimal discrimination strategy for projective measurements on polarization states of single photons. Our setup involves a real-time electrooptical feed-forward loop which allows us to fully harness …
We study intrinsic coherence in the tripartite process to unambiguously discriminate two nonorthogonal states of a qubit, entangled with another one, and assisted by an auxiliary system. The optimal success probability is found to be benefited by initial intrinsic coherence, but no extra one is required. The transformations among different contributions of intrinsic coherence are necessary in this procedure, which increase with the overlap between the states to recognize. Such state discrimination is a key step of the probabilistic teleportation protocol. Entanglement of the quantum channel de…
In this paper, the following scenario is considered: there are two qubits possessed by two parties at different locations. Qubits have been prepared in one of a maximum of four, mutually-orthogonal, entangled states and the parties wish to distinguish between the states by using local operations and classical communication. Although in general it is not possible to distinguish between four arbitrary states, the parties can spend some pre-shared entanglement to achieve perfect discrimination between four qubit states and can also preserve the entanglement of the states after discrimination. Thi…
We show here through experiments and exact analytical models the emergence of discrete time translation symmetry breaking in non-interacting systems. These time-periodic structures become stable against perturbations only in the presence of their interaction with the ancillary quantum system and display subharmonic response over a range of rotation angle errors. We demonstrate this effect for central spin and spin-mechanical systems, where the ancillary induced interaction among the spins stabilizes the spin dynamics against finite errors. Further, we extend these studies and show the possibil…
We show that for some noisy channels, the optimal entanglement-assisted strategy depends on the noise level. We note that there is a non-trivial crossover between the parallel-entangled strategy and the ancilla-assisted strategy - in the former the probes are all entangled, the latter the probes are entangled with a noiseless ancilla but not amongst themselves. The transition can be explained by the fact that, separable states are more robust against noise and therefore are optimal in the high noise limit, but they are in turn outperformed by ancilla-assisted ones.
A fundamental problem in quantum information is to explore what kind of quantum correlations is responsible for successful completion of a quantum information procedure. Here we study the roles of entanglement, discord, and dissonance needed for optimal quantum state discrimination when the latter is assisted with an auxiliary system. In such process, we present a more general joint unitary transformation than the existing results. The quantum entanglement between a principal qubit and an ancilla is found to be completely unnecessary, as it can be set to zero in the arbitrary case by adjusting…
A complete and deterministic Bell state measurement was realized by a simple linear optics experimental scheme which adopts 2-photon polarization-momentum hyperentanglement. The scheme, which is based on the discrimination among the single photon Bell states of the hyperentangled state, requires the adoption of standard single photon detectors. The four polarization Bell states have been measured with average fidelity $F=0.889\pm0.010$ by using the linear momentum degree of freedom as the ancilla. The feasibility of the scheme has been characterized as a function of the purity of momentum enta…
In this paper a programmable quantum state discriminator is implemented by using nuclear magnetic resonance. We use a two qubit spin-1/2 system, one for the data qubit and one for the ancilla (programme) qubit. This device does the unambiguous (error free) discrimination of pair of states of the data qubit that are symmetrically located about a fixed state. The device is used to discriminate both, linearly polarized states and elliptically polarized states. The maximum probability of the successful discrimination is achieved by suitably preparing the ancilla qubit. It is also shown that, the p…
A fundamental problem in quantum information is to explore the roles of different quantum correlations in a quantum information procedure. Recent work [Phys. Rev. Lett., 107 (2011) 080401] shows that the protocol for assisted optimal state discrimination (AOSD) may be implemented successfully without entanglement, but with another correlation, quantum dissonance. However, both the original work and the extension to discrimination of $d$ states [Phys. Rev. A, 85 (2012) 022328] have only proved that entanglement can be absent in the case with equal a \emph{priori} probabilities. By improving the…
We analyze entanglement swapping (ES) of partially entangled pure states with arbitrary Schmidt rank from the perspective of quantum state discrimination. It is shown that the standard deterministic ES protocol is related with an optimal minimum-error strategy. In this case the amount of entanglement of the states resulting from swapping is, in general, lower than the maximum achievable for the quantum channels involved. In this regard, we show that the ES protocol can be probabilistically improved resorting to optimal maximum-confidence (MC) discrimination strategy. Additionally, we show that…
We assess the resources needed to identify a reversible quantum gate among a finite set of alternatives, including in our analysis both deterministic and probabilistic strategies. Among the probabilistic strategies we consider unambiguous gate discrimination, where errors are not tolerated but inconclusive outcomes are allowed, and we prove that parallel strategies are sufficient to unambiguously identify the unknown gate with minimum number of queries. This result is used to provide upper and lower bounds on the query complexity and on the minimum ancilla dimension. In addition, we introduce …
Steering is the entanglement-based quantum effect that embodies the "spooky action at a distance" disliked by Einstein and scrutinized by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen. Here we provide a necessary and sufficient characterization of steering, based on a quantum information processing task: the discrimination of branches in a quantum evolution, which we dub subchannel discrimination. We prove that, for any bipartite steerable state, there are instances of the quantum subchannel discrimination problem for which this state allows a correct discrimination with strictly higher probability than in ab…
Quantum State Discrimination With Stabilizer Circuits
International Institute of Physics, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte（国际物理研究所，北里奥格兰德联邦大学）；Departamento de Física Teórica e Experimental, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte（理论与实验物理系，北里奥格兰德联邦大学）
Unambiguous non-orthogonal state discrimination has fundamental importance in quantum information and quantum cryptography. The discrimination is carried out by POVM generalized measurements. For this process, we find a tradeoff between the needed energy resources and the evolution time, and express it in terms of action-like cost inequality. We find the realization that minimizes this action-like cost and show that in this case the cost is determined by the maximal population transfer from the system to the ancilla needed for the POVM implementation.
An orthogonal product basis of a composite Hilbert space is genuinely nonlocal if the basis states are locally indistinguishable across every bipartition. From an operational point of view such a basis corresponds to a separable measurement that cannot be implemented by local operations and classical communication (LOCC) unless all the parties come together in a single location. In this work we classify genuinely nonlocal product bases into different categories. Our classification is based on state elimination property of the set via orthogonality-preserving measurements when all the parties a…
Ancilla systems are often indispensable to universal control of a nearly isolated quantum system. However, ancilla systems are typically more vulnerable to environmental noise, which limits the performance of such ancilla-assisted quantum control. To address this challenge of ancilla-induced decoherence, we propose a general framework that integrates quantum control and quantum error correction, so that we can achieve robust quantum gates resilient to ancilla noise. We introduce the path independence criterion for fault-tolerant quantum gates against ancilla errors. As an example, a path-indep…
