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. This is shown by employing the theory of majorization and the connections between entanglement transformations and state discrimination protocols.
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 …
Boosting State Discrimination in Quantum Brownian Motion Channel via Memory-Induced Coherence Preservation
Federal University of Piauí（皮奥伊联邦大学）；Federal University of Paraná（巴拉那联邦大学）；Universidade Federal do ABC（ABC联邦大学）；Southern University of Science and Technology（南方科技大学）；University of Coimbra（科英布拉大学）
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.
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…
We report on experimental evidences of the preservation of energy-time entanglement for extraordinary plasmonic light transmission through sub-wavelength metallic hole arrays, and for long range surface plasmon polaritons. Plasmons are shown to coherently exist at two different times separated by much more than the plasmons lifetime. This kind of entanglement involving light and matter is expected to be useful for future processing and storing of quantum information.
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…
We experimentally study two-photon coherence in plasmon-assisted transmission with a two-photon Mach-Zehnder (MZ) interferometer. Two collinear photons of identical or orthogonal polarization are simultaneously incident on one optically thick metal film, perforated with a periodic array of subwavelength holes. The de Broglie wavelength of plasmon-assisted transmitted photons is measured, which shows that two photons are re-eradiated by the plasmons and the quantum coherence of biphoton is preserved in the conversion process of transforming biphoton to plasmons and then back to biphoton.
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…
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…
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…
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 …
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…
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…
We develop a concept of metasurface-assisted ghost imaging for non-local discrimination between a set of polarization objects. The specially designed metasurfaces are incorporated in the imaging system to perform parallel state transformations in general elliptical bases of quantum-entangled or classically-correlated photons. Then, only four or fewer correlation measurements between multiple metasurface outputs and a simple polarization-insensitive bucket detector after the object can allow for the identification of fully or partially transparent polarization elements and their arbitrary orien…
Discrimination of unitary operations is a fundamental quantum information processing task. Assisted with linear optical elements, we experimentally demonstrate perfect discrimination between single-bit unitary operations using two methods--sequential scheme and parallel scheme. The complexity and resource consumed in these two schemes are analyzed and compared.
We analyze the capability of discriminating the statistical nature of a thermal bath by exploiting the interaction with an additional environment. We first shows that, at difference with the standard scenario where the additional environment is not present, the modified evolution induced by the mere presence of the extra bath allows to improve the discrimination task. We then also consider the possibility of continuously monitoring the additional environment and we discuss in detail how to obtain improved performances in the discrimination by considering different kinds of interaction, i.e. di…
We present an instance of a task of minimum-error discrimination of two qubit-qubit quantum channels for which a sequential strategy outperforms any parallel strategy. We then establish two new classes of strategies for channel discrimination that involve indefinite causal order and show that there exists a strict hierarchy among the performance of all four strategies. Our proof technique employs a general method of computer-assisted proofs. We also provide a systematic method for finding pairs of channels that showcase this phenomenon, demonstrating that the hierarchy between the strategies i…
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 explore the question of using an entangled state as a universal resource for implementing quantum measurements by local operations and classical communication (LOCC). We show that for most systems consisting of three or more subsystems, there is no entangled state from the same space that can enable all measurements by LOCC. This is in direct contrast to the bipartite case, where a maximally entangled state is an universal resource. Our results are obtained showing an equivalence between the problem of local state transformation and that of entanglement-assisted local unambiguous state disc…
We provide rigorous, efficiently computable and tight bounds on the average error probability of multiple-copy discrimination between qubit mixed states by Local Operations assisted with Classical Communication (LOCC). In contrast to the pure-state case, these experimentally feasible protocols perform strictly worse than the general collective ones. Our numerical results indicate that the gap between LOCC and collective error rates persists in the asymptotic limit. In order for LOCC and collective protocols to achieve the same accuracy, the former requires up to twice the number of copies of t…
We study the power of closed timelike curves (CTCs) and other nonlinear extensions of quantum mechanics for distinguishing nonorthogonal states and speeding up hard computations. If a CTC-assisted computer is presented with a labeled mixture of states to be distinguished--the most natural formulation--we show that the CTC is of no use. The apparent contradiction with recent claims that CTC-assisted computers can perfectly distinguish nonorthogonal states is resolved by noting that CTC-assisted evolution is nonlinear, so the output of such a computer on a mixture of inputs is not a convex combi…
The recent surface plasmon entanglement experiment [E. Altewischer et al., Nature (London) 418, 304 (2002)] is theoretically analyzed. The entanglement preservation upon transmission in the non-focused case is found to provide information about the interaction of the biphoton and the metallic film. The entanglement degradation in the focused case is explained in the framework of a fully multimode model. This phenomenon is a consequence of the polarization-selective filtering behavior of the metallic nanostructured film.
Consider two bosonic modes which are prepared in one of two possible Gaussian states with the same local energy: either a tensor-product thermal state (with zero correlations) or a separable Gaussian state with maximal correlations (with both classical and quantum correlations, the latter being quantified by quantum discord). For the discrimination of these states, we compare the optimal joint coherent measurement with the best local measurement based on single-mode Gaussian detections. We show how the coherent measurement always strictly outperforms the local detection strategy for both singl…
This paper studies the difficulty of discriminating between an arbitrary quantum channel and a "replacer" channel that discards its input and replaces it with a fixed state. We show that, in this particular setting, the most general adaptive discrimination strategies provide no asymptotic advantage over non-adaptive tensor-power strategies. This conclusion follows by proving a quantum Stein's lemma for this channel discrimination setting, showing that a constant bound on the Type I error leads to the Type II error decreasing to zero exponentially quickly at a rate determined by the maximum rel…
Efficient discrimination schemes for unextendible product bases with strong quantum nonlocality
School of Mathematics and Science, Hebei GEO University（河北地质大学数理学院）；Hebei Province Key Laboratory of Intelligent Sensing and Data Processing for Geo-environment, Hebei GEO University（河北省Geo环境智能感知与数据处理重点实验室）
We present two complete maximally hyperentangled state analysis protocols for photons entangled in the polarization and spatial-mode degrees of freedom. The first protocol is a hyperentangled Bell state analysis scheme for two photons and the second is a hyperentangled Greenberger-Horne- Zeilinger (GHZ) state analysis scheme for three photons. In each scheme, a set of mutually orthogonal hyperentangled basis states are completely and deterministically discriminated with the aid of cross-Kerr nonlinearities and linear optics. We also generalize the schemes to unambiguously analyze the N-photon …
Entanglement-Assisted Timing Optimization for Discriminating Amplitude-Damping Dynamics
CNR-Istituto di Fotonica e Nanotecnologie（意大利国家研究委员会光子学与纳米技术研究所）；Università di Pavia（帕维亚大学）；University of Camerino（卡梅里诺大学）；INFN–Sezione Perugia（意大利国家核物理研究所佩鲁贾分部）
Quantum separable operations are defined as those that cannot produce entanglement from separable states, and it is known that they strictly surpass local operations and classical communication (LOCC) in a number of tasks, which is sometimes referred to as "quantum nonlocality without entanglement." Here we consider a task with such a gap regarding the trade-off between state discrimination and preservation of entanglement. We show that this task along with the gap has an analogue in a purely classical setup, indicating that the quantum properties are not essential in the existence of a nonzer…
What is the ultimate performance for discriminating two arbitrary quantum channels acting on a finite-dimensional Hilbert space? Here we address this basic question by deriving a general and fundamental lower bound. More precisely, we investigate the symmetric discrimination of two arbitrary qudit channels by means of the most general protocols based on adaptive (feedback-assisted) quantum operations. In this general scenario, we first show how port-based teleportation can be used to simplify these adaptive protocols into a much simpler non-adaptive form, designing a new type of teleportation …
