Memory-assisted quantum key distribution (MA-QKD) systems are among novel promising solutions that can improve the key-rate scaling with channel loss. By using a middle node with quantum storage and measurement functionalities, they offer the same key-rate scaling with distance as a single-node quantum repeater. However, the distance at which they can surpass the nominal key rate of repeaterless systems, in terms of bits per second, is typically long, owing to the efficiency and/or interaction time issues when one deals with quantum memories. This crossover distance can be a few hundred kilometres, for instance, when one relies on the exchange of infinitely many key bits for the key-rate analysis. In a realistic setup, however, we should account for the finite-key effects in our analysis. Here, we show that accounting for such effects would actually favour MA-QKD setups, by reducing the crossover distance to the regime where realistic implementations can take place. We demonstrate this by rigorously analysing a decoy-state version of MA-QKD, in the finite-key regime, using memory parameters already achievable experimentally. This provides us with a better understanding of the advantages and challenges of working with memory-based systems.
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…
In this paper we evaluate the entanglement assisted classical capacity of a class of quantum channels with long-term memory, which are convex combinations of memoryless channels. The memory of such channels can be considered to be given by a Markov chain which is aperiodic but not irreducible.
Uncertainty principle has a fundamental role in quantum theory. This principle states that it is not possible to measure two incompatible observers simultaneously. The uncertainty principle is expressed logically in terms of standard deviation of the measured observables. In quantum information it has been shown that the uncertainty principle can be expressed by means of Shannon's entropy. Entropic uncertainty relation can be improve by consider an additional particle as the quantum memory. In the presence of quantum memory the entropic uncertainty relation is called quantum memory assisted en…
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 derive a new memory-assisted entropic uncertainty relation for non-degenerate Hermitian observables where both quantum correlations, in the form of conditional von Neumann entropy, and quantum discord between system and memory play an explicit role. Our relation is `universal', in the sense that it does not depend on the specific observable, but only on properties of the quantum state. We contrast such an uncertainty relation with previously known memory-assisted relations based on entanglement and correlations. Further, we present a detailed comparative study of entanglement- and discord-a…
The limitation of simultaneous measurements of noncommuting observables can be eliminated when the measured particle is maximally entangled with a quantum memory. We present a proposal for testing this quantum-memory-assisted entropic uncertainty relation in a single nitrogen-vacancy (N-V) center in diamond only by local electronic measurements. As an application, this entropic uncertainty relation is used to witness entanglement between the electron and nuclear spins of the N-V center, which is close to the reach of currently available technology.
We relate the principle of quantum-memory-assisted entropic uncertainty to quantum teleportation and show geometrically that any two-qubit state which lowers the upper bound of this uncertainty relation is useful for teleportation. We also explore the efficiency of this entropic uncertainty principle on witnessing entanglement in a general class of bosonic structured reservoirs. The entanglement regions witnessed by different estimates are determined, which may have no relation with the explicit form of the spectral density of the reservoir for certain special chosen sets of the initial states…
We calculate the information capacities of a time-correlated amplitude-damping channel, provided the sender and receiver share prior entanglement. Our analytical results show that the noisy channel with zero capacity can transmit information if it has finite memory. The capacities increase as the memory increases attaining maximum value for perfect memory channel.
Quantum discord and quantum uncertainty are two important features of the quantum world. In this work, the relation between entropic uncertainty relation and the shareability of quantum discord is studied. First, by using tripartite quantum-memory-assisted entropic uncertainty relation, an upper bound for the shareability of quantum discord among different partites of a composite system is obtained. It is also shown that, for a specific class of tripartite states, the obtained relation could be expressed as monogamy of quantum discord. Moreover, it is illustrated that the relation could be gen…
The uncertainty principle determines the distinction between the classical and quantum worlds. This principle states that it is not possible to measure two incompatible observables with the desired accuracy simultaneously. In quantum information theory, Shannon entropy has been used as an appropriate measure to express the uncertainty relation. According to the applications of entropic uncertainty relation, studying and trying to improve the bound of this relation is of great importance. Uncertainty bound can be altered by considering an extra quantum system as the quantum memory $B$ which is …
With the aid of a quantum memory, the uncertainty about the measurement outcomes of two incompatible observables of a quantum system can be reduced. We investigate this measurement uncertainty bound by considering an additional quantum system connected with both the quantum memory and the measured quantum system. We find that the reduction of the uncertainty bound induced by a quantum memory, on the other hand, implies its increasing for a third participant. We also show that the properties of the uncertainty bound can be viewed from perspectives of both quantum and classical correlations, in …
The measurement outcomes of two incompatible observables on a particle can be precisely predicted when it is maximally entangled with a quantum memory, as quantified recently [Nature Phys. 6, 659 (2010)]. We explore the behavior of the uncertainty relation under the influence of local unital and nonunital noisy channels. While the unital noises only increase the amount of uncertainty, the amplitude-damping nonunital noises may amazingly reduce the amount of uncertainty in the long-time limit. This counterintuitive phenomenon could be justified by different competitive mechanisms between quantu…
A protocol with the potential of beating the existing distance records for conventional quantum key distribution (QKD) systems is proposed. It borrows ideas from quantum repeaters by using memories in the middle of the link, and that of measurement-device-independent QKD, which only requires optical source equipment at the user's end. For certain fast memories, our scheme allows a higher repetition rate than that of quantum repeaters, thereby requiring lower coherence times. By accounting for various sources of nonideality, such as memory decoherence, dark counts, misalignment errors, and back…
Uncertainty relations take a crucial and fundamental part in the frame of quantum theory, and are bringing on many marvelous applications in the emerging field of quantum information sciences. Especially, as entropy is imposed into the uncertainty principle, entropy-based uncertainty relations lead to a number of applications including quantum key distribution, entanglement witness, quantum steering, quantum metrology, and quantum teleportation. Herein, the history of the development of the uncertainty relations is discussed, especially focusing on the recent progress with regard to quantum-me…
Memory-assisted measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (MA-MDI-QKD) is a promising scheme that aims to improve the rate-versus-distance behavior of a QKD system by using the state-of-the-art devices. It can be seen as a bridge between current QKD links to quantum repeater based networks. While, similar to quantum repeaters, MA-MDI-QKD relies on quantum memory (QM) units, the requirements for such QMs are less demanding than that of probabilistic quantum repeaters. Here, we present a variant of MA-MDI-QKD structure that relies on only a single physical QM: a nitrogen-vacancy ce…
The uncertainty principle is one of the most important issues that clarify the distinction between classical and quantum theory. This principle sets a bound on our ability to predict the measurement outcome of two incompatible observables precisely. Uncertainty principle can be formulated via Shannon entropies of the probability distributions of measurement outcome of the two observables. It has shown that the entopic uncertainty bound can be improved by considering an additional particle as the quantum memory $B$ which has correlation with the measured particle $A$. In this work we consider t…
Successful implementation of several quantum information and communication protocols require distributing entangled pairs of quantum bits in reliable manner. While there exists a substantial amount of recent theoretical and experimental activities dealing with non-Markovian quantum dynamics, experimental application and verification of the usefulness of memory-effects for quantum information tasks is still missing. We combine these two aspects and show experimentally that a recently introduced concept of nonlocal memory effects allows to protect and distribute polarization entangled pairs of p…
Utilization of the spatial degree of freedom vastly enhances informational capacity of light at the cost of stringent requirements on the processing devices. Multi-mode quantum memories constitute a viable candidate for quantum and classical information processing; however, full utilization of the assets of high-dimensionality requires a flexible processing technique. We employ a spatially varying ac-Stark effect to perform arbitrary 1D phase modulation of a coherent spin-wave state stored in a wavevector-multiplexed quantum memory. A far-field and an interferometric near-field characterizatio…
The uncertainty principle brings out intrinsic quantum bounds on the precision of measuring non-commuting observables. Statistical outcomes in the measurement of incompatible observables reveal a trade-off on the sum of corresponding entropies. Massen-Uffink entropic uncertainty relation (Phys. Rev. Lett. 60, 1103 (1988)) constrains the sum of entropies associated with incompatible measurements. The entropic uncertainty principle in the presence of quantum memory (Nature Phys. 6, 659 (2010)) brought about a fascinating twist by showing that quantum side information, enabled due to entanglement…
We propose a scheme that generalizes the loss scaling properties of twin-field or phase-matching quantum key distribution (QKD) related to a channel of transmission $η_{total}$ from $\sqrt{η_{total}}$ to $\sqrt[2n]{η_{total}}$ by employing n-1 memory stations with spin qubits and n beam-splitter stations including optical detectors. Our scheme's resource states are similar to the coherent-state-based light-matter entangled states of a previous hybrid quantum repeater, but unlike the latter our scheme avoids the necessity of employing 2n-1 memory stations and writing the transmitted optical sta…
The memory effects in non-Markovian quantum dynamics can induce the revival of quantum coherence, which is believed to provide important physical resources for quantum information processing (QIP). However, no real quantum algorithms have been demonstrated with the help of such memory effects. Here, we experimentally implemented a non-Markovianity-assisted highfidelity refined Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm (RDJA) with a solid spin in diamond. The memory effects can induce pronounced nonmonotonic variations in the RDJA results, which were confirmed to follow a non-Markovian quantum process by measuri…
An efficient quantum cryptography network protocol is proposed with d-dimension polarized photons, without resorting to entanglement and quantum memory. A server on the network, say Alice, provides the service for preparing and measuring single photons whose initial state are |0>. The users code the information on the single photons with some unitary operations. For preventing the untrustworthy server Alice from eavesdropping the quantum lines, a nonorthogonal-coding technique (decoy-photon technique) is used in the process that the quantum signal is transmitted between the users. This protoco…
We propose to implement a solid-state rotation sensor by employing a many-body quantum spin system which takes the advantages of the easy controllability of the electron spin and the robustness provided by the collective nuclear spin state. The sensor consists of a central electron spin coupled to many surrounding nuclear spins. Previously, this central spin system has been suggested to realize a quantum memory. Here, we further utilize the collective nuclear spins, which store a certain quantum state, to detect the macroscopic rotation. Different from other nuclear spin-based gyroscopes, our …
Memory-assisted quantum key distribution (MA-QKD) has recently been proposed as a technique to improve the rate-versus-distance behavior of QKD systems by using existing, or nearly-achievable, quantum technologies. The promise is that MA-QKD would require less demanding quantum memories than the ones needed for probabilistic quantum repeaters. Nevertheless, early investigations suggest that, in order to beat the conventional no-memory QKD schemes, the quantum memories used in the MA-QKD protocols must have high bandwidth-storage products and short interaction times. Among different types of qu…
We propose a quantum error correction protocol for continuous-variable finite-energy, approximate Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) states undergoing small Gaussian random displacement errors, based on the scheme of Glancy and Knill [Phys. Rev. A {\bf 73}, 012325 (2006)]. We show that combining multiple rounds of error-syndrome extraction with Bayesian estimation offers enhanced protection of GKP-encoded qubits over comparible single-round approaches. Furthermore, we show that the expected total displacement error incurred in multiple rounds of error followed by syndrome extraction is bounded by…
In the last two decades, many quantum optics experiments have demonstrated small-scale quantum information processing applications with several photons. Beyond such proof-of-principle demonstrations, efficient preparation of large, but definite, numbers of photons is of great importance for further scaling up and speeding up photonic quantum information processing. Typical single-photon generation techniques based on nonlinear parametric processes face challenges of probabilistic generation. Here we demonstrate efficient synchronization of photons from multiple nonlinear parametric heralded si…
We show how extra entanglement shared between sender and receiver reduces the memory requirements for a general entanglement-assisted quantum convolutional code. We construct quantum convolutional codes with good error-correcting properties by exploiting the error-correcting properties of an arbitrary basic set of Pauli generators. The main benefit of this particular construction is that there is no need to increase the frame size of the code when extra shared entanglement is available. Then there is no need to increase the memory requirements or circuit complexity of the code because the fram…
In this paper, we investigate coherence protection of a quantum system coupled to a hierarchical environment by utilizing noise. As an example, we solve the Jaynes-Cummings (J-C) model in presence of both a classical and a quantized noise. The master equation is derived beyond the Markov approximation, where the influence of memory effects from both noises is taken into account. More importantly, we find that the performance of the coherence protection sensitively depends on the non-Markovian properties of both noises. By analyzing the mathematical mechanism of the coherence protection, we sho…
We calculate the entanglement-assisted classical capacity of symmetric and asymmetric Pauli channels where two consecutive uses of the channels are correlated. It is evident from our study that in the presence of memory, a higher amount of classical information is transmitted over quantum channels if there exists prior entanglement as compared to product and entangled state coding.
We demonstrate that memory in an $N$-qubit system subjected to decoherence, is a potential resource for the slow-down of the entanglement decay. We show that this effect can be used to retain the sub shot-noise sensitivity of the parameter estimation in quantum interferometry. We calculate quantum Fisher information, which sets the ultimate bound for the precision of the estimation. We also derive the sensitivity of such a noisy interferometer, when the phase is either estimated from the measurements of the population imbalance or from the one-body density.
Entropic uncertainty and entanglement are two distinct aspects of quantum mechanical procedures. To estimate entropic uncertainty relations, entropies are used: the greater the entropy bound, the less effective the quantum operations and entanglement are. In this regard, we analyze the entropic uncertainty, entropic uncertainty lower bound, and concurrence dynamics in two non-interacting qubits. The exposure of two qubits is studied in two different qubit-noise configurations, namely, common qubit-noise and independent qubit-noise interactions. To include the noisy effects of the local externa…
We generalize measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution [ H.-K. Lo, M. Curty, and B. Qi, Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 130503 (2012) ] to the scenario where the Bell-state measurement station contains also heralded quantum memories. We find analytical formulas, in terms of device imperfections, for all quantities entering in the secret key rates, i.e., the quantum bit error rate and the repeater rate. We assume either single-photon sources or weak coherent pulse sources plus decoy states. We show that it is possible to significantly outperform the original proposal, even in presence of d…
We study entanglement-assisted quantum and classical communication over a single use of a quantum channel, which itself can correspond to a finite number of uses of a channel with arbitrarily correlated noise. We obtain characterizations of the corresponding one-shot capacities by establishing upper and lower bounds on them in terms of the difference of two smoothed entropic quantities. In the case of a memoryless channel, the upper and lower bounds converge to the known single-letter formulas for the corresponding capacities, in the limit of asymptotically many uses of it. Our results imply t…
We propose a method to probe time dependent correlations of non trivial observables in many-body ultracold lattice gases. The scheme uses a quantum non-demolition matter-light interface, first, to map the observable of interest on the many body system into the light and, then, to store coherently such information into an external system acting as a quantum memory. Correlations of the observable at two (or more) instances of time are retrieved with a single final measurement that includes the readout of the quantum memory. Such method brings at reach the study of dynamics of many-body systems i…
Entanglement and entanglement-assisted are useful resources to enhance the mutual information of the Pauli channels, when the noise on consecutive uses of the channel has some partial correlations. In this paper, We study quantum communication channels with correlated noise and derive a general expression for the mutual information of quantum channel, for the product, maximally entangled state coding and entanglement-assisted systems with correlated noise in the Pauli quantum channels. Hence, we suggest more efficient coding in the entanglement-assisted systems for the transmission of classica…
The uncertainty principle is one of the comprehensive and fundamental concept in quantum theory. This principle states that it is not possible to simultaneously measure two incompatible observatories with high accuracy. Uncertainty principle has been formulated in various form. The most famous type of uncertainty relation is expressed based on the standard deviation of observables. In quantum information theory the uncertainty principle can be formulated using Shannon and von Neumann entropy. Entropic uncertainty relation in the presence of quantum memory is one of the most useful entropic unc…
Spin-outcome correlations and memory-assisted entropic uncertainty in Bhabha scattering with an entangled spectator
State Key Laboratory of Opto-Electronic Information Acquisition and Protection Technology, School of Physics, Anhui University（安徽大学光电信息获取与保护技术国家重点实验室物理学院）
A scheme for spatial multimode quantum memory is developed such that spatial-temporal structure of a weak signal pulse can be stored and recalled via cavity-assisted off-resonant Raman interaction with a strong angular-modulated control field in an extended $Λ$-type atomic ensemble. It is shown that effective multimode storage is possible when the Raman coherence spatial grating involves wave vectors with different longitudinal components relative to the paraxial signal field. The possibilities of implementing the scheme in the solid-state materials are discussed.
We derive upper bounds on the rate of transmission of classical information over quantum channels by block codes with a given blocklength and error probability, for both entanglement-assisted and unassisted codes, in terms of a unifying framework of quantum hypothesis testing with restricted measurements. Our bounds do not depend on any special property of the channel (such as memorylessness) and generalise both a classical converse of Polyanskiy, Poor, and Verdú as well as a quantum converse of Renner and Wang, and have a number of desirable properties. In particular our bound on entanglement…
