Consider the task of verifying that a given quantum device, designed to produce a particular entangled state, does indeed produce that state. One natural approach would be to characterise the output state by quantum state tomography; or alternatively to perform some kind of Bell test, tailored to the state of interest. We show here that neither approach is optimal amongst local verification strategies for two qubit states. We find the optimal strategy in this case and show that quadratically fewer total measurements are needed to verify to within a given fidelity than in published results for quantum state tomography, Bell test, or fidelity estimation protocols. We also give efficient verification protocols for any stabilizer state. Additionally, we show that requiring that the strategy be constructed from local, non-adaptive and non-collective measurements only incurs a constant-factor penalty over a strategy without these restrictions.
Continuous-variable quantum states are of particular importance in various quantum information processing tasks including quantum communication and quantum sensing. However, a bottleneck has emerged with the fast increasing in size of the quantum systems which severely hinders their efficient characterization. In this work, we establish a systematic framework for verifying entangled continuous-variable quantum states by employing local measurements only. Our protocol is able to achieve the unconditionally high verification efficiency which is quadratically better than quantum tomography as wel…
Properties of entangled photon pairs generated in spontaneous parametric down-conversion are investigated in interference experiments. Strong energy correlations are demonstrated in a direct way. If a signal photon is detected behind a narrow spectral filter, then interference appears in the Mach-Zehnder interferometer placed in the route of the idler photon, even if the path difference in the interferometer exceeds the coherence length of the light. Narrow time correlations of the detection instants are demonstrated for the same photon-pair source using the Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometer. Both…
The efficient and reliable characterization of quantum states plays a vital role in most, if not all, quantum information processing tasks. In this work, we present a universally optimal protocol for verifying entangled states by employing the so-called quantum nondemolition measurements, such that the verification efficiency is equivalent to that of the optimal global strategy. Instead of being probabilistic as the standard verification strategies, our protocol is constructed sequentially, which is thus more favorable for experimental realizations. In addition, the target states are preserved…
Efficient Verification of Entangled Measurements with Local States
Independent Researcher（独立研究者）；School of Data Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen（香港中文大学（深圳）数据科学学院）；International Quantum Academy (SIQA)（国际量子学院）
The initialization of a quantum system into a certain state is a crucial aspect of quantum information science. While a variety of measurement strategies have been developed to characterize how well the system is initialized, for a given one, there is in general a trade-off between its efficiency and the accessible information of the quantum state. Conventional quantum state tomography can characterize unknown states by reconstructing the density matrix; however, its exponentially expensive postprocessing is likely to produce a deviate result. Alternatively, quantum state verification provides…
We study the verification of maximally entangled states by virtue of the simplest measurement settings: local projective measurements without adaption. We show that optimal protocols are in one-to-one correspondence with complex projective 2-designs constructed from orthonormal bases. Optimal protocols with minimal measurement settings are in one-to-one correspondence with complete sets of mutually unbiased bases. Based on this observation, optimal protocols are constructed explicitly for any local dimension, which can also be applied to estimating the fidelity with the target state and to det…
Assessing the quality of an ensemble of noisy entangled states is a central task in quantum information processing. Usually this is done by measuring and hence destroying multiple copies, from which state tomography or fidelity estimation can be employed to characterize states. Here we propose several methods to directly distinguish between two different sets of states, e.g. if their fidelity is above or below a certain threshold value. This turns out to be significantly more efficient, and importantly keeps the verified states intact. We make use of auxiliary entanglement or an ensemble of la…
We discuss quantum position verification (QPV) protocols in which the verifiers create and send single-qubit states to the prover. QPV protocols using single-qubit states are known to be insecure against adversaries that share a small number of entangled qubits. We introduce QPV protocols that are practically secure: they only require single-qubit states from each of the verifiers, yet their security is broken if the adversaries share an impractically large number of shared entangled qubits. These protocols are a modification of known QPV protocols in which we include a classical random oracle…
To gain an advantage, quantum technologies utilize phenomena particular to quantum mechanics. Two such phenomena are squeezing and entanglement. Having generated states that exhibit these features, verification of their generation with local measurements can be a difficult process. Here we consider the states that are generated using the two-qudit single-axis squeezing Hamiltonian, that not only produces entangled two-qudit squeezed states but also results in various forms of interesting entangled states. We show how one can use local measurements to both efficiently verify and directly estima…
Preparing and certifying bound entangled states in the laboratory is an intrinsically hard task, due to both the fact that they typically form narrow regions in the state space, and that a certificate requires a tomographic reconstruction of the density matrix. Indeed, the previous experiments that have reported the preparation of a bound entangled state relied on such tomographic reconstruction techniques. However, the reliability of these results crucially depends on the extra assumption of an unbiased reconstruction. We propose an alternative method for certifying the bound entangled charac…
Multipartite entangled states are a fundamental resource for a wide range of quantum information processing tasks. In particular, in quantum networks it is essential for the parties involved to be able to verify if entanglement is present before they carry out a given distributed task. Here we design and experimentally demonstrate a protocol that allows any party in a network to check if a source is distributing a genuinely multipartite entangled state, even in the presence of untrusted parties. The protocol remains secure against dishonest behaviour of the source and other parties, including …
The controlled generation of entangled states and their subsequent detection are integral aspects of quantum information science. In this work, we analyse the application of nonlinear witnesses to the verification of entanglement, and we demonstrate experimentally that nonlinear witnesses perform significantly better than linear witnesses. Specifically, we demonstrate that a single non- linear entanglement witness is able to determine to a high degree of certainty that a mixed state containing orbital angular momentum (OAM) entanglement of specific forms is entangled for any relative phase and…
A continuous-variable tripartite entangled state is experimentally generated by combining three independent squeezed vacuum states and the variances of its relative positions and total momentum are measured. We show that the measured values violate the separability criteria based on the sum of these quantities and prove the full inseparability of the generated state.
In secure quantum communication protocols, a set of single qubits prepared using 2 or more mutually unbiased bases or a set of $n$-qubit ($n\geq2$) entangled states of a particular form are usually used to form a verification string which is subsequently used to detect traces of eavesdropping. The qubits that form a verification string are referred to as decoy qubits, and there exists a large set of different quantum states that can be used as decoy qubits. In the absence of noise, any choice of decoy qubits provides equivalent security. In this paper, we examine such equivalence for noisy env…
We investigate an optimal distance of two components in an entangled coherent state for quantum phase estimation in lossy interferometry. The optimal distance is obtained by an economical point, representing the quantum Fisher information that we can extract per input energy. Maximizing the formula of the quantum Fisher information over an input mean photon number, we show that, as the losses of the interferometer increase, it can be more beneficial to prepare an initially entangled coherent state that is less entangled. This represents that the optimal distance of the two-mode components decr…
We report on the quantification of entanglement by means of entanglement measures on a four- and a six- qubit cluster state realized by using photons entangled both in polarization and linear momentum. This paper also addresss the question of the scaling of entanglement bounds from incomplete tomographic information on the density matrix under realistic experimental conditions.
We investigate the production of entangled X-ray photons by incoherent double Compton scattering (IDCS) which seems to be an interesting alternative to coherent double Compton scattering used in earlier work. Very recently it has been proposed to use the Unruh effect as a source for photon pairs (R.Schützhold et al.,Phys.Rev.Lett. 100, 091301 (2008)). We will discuss this mechanism in comparison with inverse IDCS.
We examine dense coding with an arbitrary pure entangled state sharing between the sender and the receiver. Upper bounds on the average success probability in approximate dense coding and on the probability of conclusive results in unambiguous dense coding are derived. We also construct the optimal protocol which saturates the upper bound in each case.
Recently, Briegel et al. present a quantum repeaters protocol using nest entanglement purification for long distance quantum communication(Physical Review Letters \textbf{81},5932). In this paper we present a modified scheme for constructing an optimal quantum repeater using doubly entangled photon pairs that overcomes the limitations of quantum communication via noisy channels. Based on the imperfect quantum operations and classical communications, the polarization entangled quantum channels can be built with a better efficiency.
One of the important approaches to detect quantum entanglement is using linear entanglement witnesses EWs. In this paper, by determining the envelope of the boundary hyper-planes defined by a family of linear EWs, a set of powerful nonlinear optimal EWs is manipulated. These EWs enable us to detect some three qubits bound MUB (mutually unbiased bases) diagonal entangled states, i.e., the PPT (positive partial transpose) entangled states. Also, in some particular cases, the introduced nonlinear optimal EWs are powerful enough to separate the bound entangled regions from the separable ones. Fina…
Any Bell test consists of a sequence of measurements on a quantum state in space-like separated regions. Thus, a state is better than others for a Bell test when, for the optimal measurements and the same number of trials, the probability of existence of a local model for the observed outcomes is smaller. The maximization over states and measurements defines the optimal nonlocality proof. Numerical results show that the required optimal state does not have to be maximally entangled.
The structure of all completely positive quantum operations is investigated which transform pure two-qubit input states of a given degree of entanglement in a covariant way. Special cases thereof are quantum NOT operations which transform entangled pure two-qubit input states of a given degree of entanglement into orthogonal states in an optimal way. Based on our general analysis all covariant optimal two-qubit quantum NOT operations are determined. In particular, it is demonstrated that only in the case of maximally entangled input states these quantum NOT operations can be performed perfectl…
We investigate the problem of copying pure two-qubit states of a given degree of entanglement in an optimal way. Completely positive covariant quantum operations are constructed which maximize the fidelity of the output states with respect to two separable copies. These optimal copying processes hint at the intricate relationship between fundamental laws of quantum theory and entanglement.
In this paper, we employ theoretical and experimental efforts and realize a proof-of-principle verification of device-independent QKD based on the photonic setup. On the theoretical side, we enhance the loss tolerance for real device imperfections by combining different approaches, namely, random post-selection, noisy preprocessing, and developed numerical methods to estimate the key rate via the von Neumann entropy. On the experimental side, we develop a high-quality polarization-entangled photon source achieving a state-of-the-art (heralded) detection efficiency about 87.5%. This efficiency …
We consider the problem of establishing entangled states of optimal singlet fraction and negativity between two remote parties for every use of a noisy quantum channel and trace-preserving LOCC under the assumption that the parties do not share prior correlations. We show that for a family of quantum channels in every finite dimension $d\geq3$, one-shot optimal singlet fraction and entanglement negativity are attained only with appropriate nonmaximally entangled states. We further show that the generalization of the formula that exactly computes one-shot optimal singlet fraction for qubit chan…
Statistical verification of a quantum state aims to certify whether a given unknown state is close to the target state with confidence. So far, sample-optimal verification protocols based on local measurements have been found only for disparate groups of states: bipartite pure states, GHZ states, and antisymmetric basis states. In this work, we investigate systematically optimal verification of entangled stabilizer states using Pauli measurements. First, we provide a lower bound on the sample complexity of any verification protocol based on separable measurements, which is independent of the n…
The efficient and reliable verification of quantum states plays a crucial role in various quantum information processing tasks. We consider the task of verifying entangled states using one-way and two-way classical communication and completely characterize the optimal strategies via convex optimization. We solve these optimization problems using both analytical and numerical methods, and the optimal strategies can be constructed for any bipartite pure state. Compared with the nonadaptive approach, our adaptive strategies significantly improve the efficiency of quantum state verification. Moreo…
Future quantum information networks will likely consist of quantum and classical agents, who have the ability to communicate in a variety of ways with trusted and untrusted parties and securely delegate computational tasks to untrusted large-scale quantum computing servers. Multipartite quantum entanglement is a fundamental resource for such a network and hence it is imperative to study the possibility of verifying a multipartite entanglement source in a way that is efficient and provides strong guarantees even in the presence of multiple dishonest parties. In this work, we show how an agent o…
By performing local projective measurements on a two-qubit entangled state one can certify in a device-independent way up to one bit of randomness. We show here that general measurements, defined by positive-operator-valued measures, can certify up to two bits of randomness, which is the optimal amount of randomness that can be certified from an entangled bit. General measurements thus provide an advantage over projective ones for device-independent randomness certification.
To acquire the best path-entangled photon Fock states for robust quantum optical metrology with parity detection, we calculate phase information from a lossy interferometer by using twin entangled Fock states. We show that (a) when loss is less than 50% twin entangled Fock states with large photon number difference give higher visibility while when loss is higher than 50% the ones with less photon number difference give higher visibility; (b) twin entangled Fock states with large photon number difference give sub-shot-noise limit sensitivity for phase detection in a lossy environment. This res…
We experimentally investigate a double-pass parametric down-conversion scheme for producing pulsed, polarization-entangled photon pairs with high visibility. The amplitudes for creating photon pairs on each pass interfere to compensate for distinguishing characteristics that normally degrade two-photon visibility. The result is a high-flux source of polarization-entangled photon pulses that does not require spectral filtering. We observe quantum interference visibility of over 95% without the use of spectral filters for 200 femtosecond pulses, and up to 98.1% with 5 nm bandwidth filters.
In the asymptotic setting, the optimal test for hypotheses testing of the maximally entangled state is derived under several locality conditions for measurements. The optimal test is obtained in several cases with the asymptotic framework as well as the finite-sample framework. In addition, the experimental scheme for the optimal test is presented.
We consider one copy of a quantum system prepared with equal prior probability in one of two non-orthogonal entangled states of multipartite distributed among separated parties. We demonstrate that these two states can be optimally distinguished in the sense of conclusive discrimination by local operations and classical communications(LOCC) alone. And this proves strictly the conjecture that Virmani et.al. [8] confirmed numerically and analytically. Generally, the optimal protocol requires local POVM operations which are explicitly constructed. The result manifests that the distinguishable inf…
It is known that entanglement swapping can be used to realize entanglement purifying. By this way, two particles belong to different non-maximally entangled pairs can be projected probabilisticly to a maximally entangled state or to a less entangled state. In this report, we show, when the less entangled state is obtained, if a unitary transformation is introduced locally, then a maximally entangled state can be obtained probabilisticly from this less entangled state. The total successful probability of our scheme is equal to the entanglement of a single pairpurification (if two original pairs…
Local quantum operations relating multiqubit flip (0-1) and exchange symmetric (FES) states, with the maximum possible probability of success, have been determined by assuming that the states are converted via one-shot FES transformations. It has been shown that certain entangled states are more robust than others, in the sense that the optimum probability of converting these robust states to the states lying in the close neighborhood of separable ones vanish under local FES operations.
We propose two optimal entanglement concentration protocols (ECPs) for arbitrary single-photon multi-mode W state and multi-photon polarization W state, respectively. In both ECPs, we only require one pair of partially entangled W state, and do not consume any auxiliary photon. Both ECPs are based on the linear optics which can be easily realized. On the other hand, the concentrated maximally entangled states can be remained, which are quite different from the previous ECPs. Moreover, for the concentration of the arbitrary single-photon N-mode W state or N-mode polarization W state, the total …
We present a consistent multimode theory that describes the coupling of single photons generated by collinear Type-I parametric down-conversion into single-mode optical fibers. We have calculated an analytic expression for the fiber diameter which maximizes the pair photon count rate. For a given focal length and wavelength, a lower limit of the fiber diameter for satisfactory coupling is obtained.
While feedback control has many applications in quantum systems, finding optimal control protocols for this task is generally challenging. So-called "verification theorems" and "viscosity solutions" provide two useful tools for this purpose: together they give a simple method to check whether any given protocol is optimal, and provide a numerical method for finding optimal protocols. While treatments of verification theorems usually use sophisticated mathematical language, this is not necessary. In this article we give a simple introduction to feedback control in quantum systems, and then desc…
Bellman's optimality principle has been of enormous importance in the development of whole branches of applied mathematics, computer science, optimal control theory, economics, decision making, and classical physics. Examples are numerous: dynamic programming, Markov chains, stochastic dynamics, calculus of variations, and the brachistochrone problem. Here we show that Bellman's optimality principle is violated in a teleportation problem on a quantum network. This implies that finding the optimal fidelity route for teleporting a quantum state between two distant nodes on a quantum network with…
We propose a deterministic scheme for teleporting an unknown qubit through continuous-variable entangled states in superconducting circuits. The qubit is a superconducting two-level system and the bipartite quantum channel is a photonic entangled coherent state between two cavities. A Bell-type measurement performed on the hybrid state of solid and photonic states brings a discrete-variable unknown electronic state to a continuous-variable photonic cat state in a cavity mode. This scheme further enables applications for quantum information processing in the same architecture of circuit-QED suc…
We present a one-shot method for preparing pure entangled states between a sender and a receiver at a minimal cost of entanglement and quantum communication. In the case of preparing unentangled states, an earlier paper showed that a 2n-qubit quantum state could be communicated to a receiver by physically transmitting only n+o(n) qubits in addition to consuming n ebits of entanglement and some shared randomness. When the states to be prepared are entangled, we find that there is a reduction in the number of qubits that need to be transmitted, interpolating between no communication at all for m…
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 derive the amount of information retrieved by a quantum measurement in estimating an unknown maximally entangled state, along with the pertaining disturbance on the state itself. The optimal tradeoff between information and disturbance is obtained, and a corresponding optimal measurement is provided.
We review the generation of random pure states using a protocol of repeated two qubit gates. We study the dependence of the convergence to states with Haar multipartite entanglement distribution. We investigate the optimal generation of such states in terms of the physical (real) time needed to apply the protocol, instead of the gate complexity point of view used in other works. This physical time can be obtained, for a given Hamiltonian, within the theoretical framework offered by the quantum brachistochrone formalism. Using an anisotropic Heisenberg Hamiltonian as an example, we find that di…
High-dimensional entanglement is significant for the fundamental studies of quantum physics and offers unique advantages in various quantum information processing (QIP) tasks. Integrated quantum devices have recently emerged as a promising platform for creating, processing, and detecting complex high-dimensional entangled states. A crucial step towards practical quantum technologies is to verify that these devices work reliably with an optimal strategy. In this work, we experimentally implement an optimal quantum verification strategy on a three-dimensional maximally entangled state using loca…
We investigate the trade-off between information gain and disturbance for a class of weak von Neumann measurements on spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ particles, and derive the unusual measurement pointer state that saturates this trade-off. We then consider the fundamental question of sharing the non-locality of a single particle of an entangled pair among multiple observers, and demonstrate that by exploiting the information gain disturbance trade-off, one can obtain an arbitrarily long sequence of consecutive and independent violations of the CHSH-Bell inequality.
