One of the major obstacles faced by quantum-enabled technology is the environmental noise that causes decoherence in the quantum system, thereby destroying much of its quantum aspects and introducing errors while the system undergoes quantum operations and processing. A number of techniques have been invented to mitigate the environmental effects, and many of these techniques are specific to the environment and the quantum tasks at hand. Here, we propose a protocol that makes arbitrary environments effectively noise-free or transparent using an ancilla, which, in particular, is well suited to protect information stored in atoms. The ancilla, which is the photons, is allowed to undergo restricted but a wide class of noisy operations. The protocol transfers the information of the system onto the decoherence-free subspace and later retrieves it back to the system. Consequently, it enables full protection of quantum information and entanglement in the atomic system from decoherence. We propose experimental schemes to implement this protocol on atomic systems in an optical cavity.
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.
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 …
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.
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 …
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…
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…
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…
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 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…
When measuring quantum spins at two or more different times, the later measurements are affected by measurement backaction occurring due to the earlier measurements. This makes the measurement of temporal quantum correlation functions challenging. In this paper, I propose a measurement protocol that mitigates the effect of measurement backaction by exploiting spin selection rules. I show that, under suitable conditions, the effect of measurement backaction on two-time quantum correlations becomes negligible when probing a system consisting of spins with large spin quantum numbers $l\gg s$ by c…
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…
We consider the recently proposed "no-go" theorem of Lamata et al [Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 180506 (2008)] on the impossibility of sequential implementation of global unitary operations with the aid of an itinerant ancillary system and view the claim within the language of Kraus representation. By virtue of an extremely useful tool for analyzing entanglement properties of quantum operations, namely, operator-Schmidt decomposition, we provide alternative proof to the "no-go" theorem and also study the role of initial correlations between the qubits and ancilla in sequential preparation of unitary …
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 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.
We review the use of an external auxiliary detector for measuring the full distribution of the work performed on or extracted from a quantum system during a unitary thermodynamic process. We first illustrate two paradigmatic schemes that allow one to measure the work distribution: a Ramsey technique to measure the characteristic function and a positive operator valued measure (POVM) scheme to directly measure the work probability distribution. Then, we show that these two ideas can be understood in a unified framework for assessing work fluctuations through a generic quantum detector and descr…
A Variational Dissipative Framework for Quantum Algorithms
Center on Frontiers of Computing Studies, Peking University（北京大学前沿计算研究中心）；School of Computer Science, Peking University（北京大学计算机学院）；Faculty of Information Science and Engineering, Ocean University of China（中国海洋大学信息科学与工程学院）；Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院高能物理研究所）；China Center of Advanced Science and Technology（中国科学院科技政策与管理科学研究所）
We propose a quantum algorithm to obtain the lowest eigenstate of any Hamiltonian simulated by a quantum computer. The proposed algorithm begins with an arbitrary initial state of the simulated system. A finite series of transforms is iteratively applied to the initial state assisted with an ancillary qubit. The fraction of the lowest eigenstate in the initial state is then amplified up to $\simeq 1$. We prove that our algorithm can faithfully work for any arbitrary Hamiltonian in the theoretical analysis. Numerical analyses are also carried out. We firstly provide a numerical proof-of-princip…
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…
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…
Entanglement-assisted quantum communication employs pre-shared entanglement between sender and receiver as a resource. We apply the same framework to quantum metrology, introducing shared entanglement between the preparation and the measurement stage, namely using some entangled ancillary system that does not interact with the system to be sampled. This is known to be useless in the noiseless case, but was recently shown to be useful in the presence of noise. Here we detail how and when it can be of use. For example, surprisingly it is useful when randomly time sharing two channels where ancil…
We give a capacity formula for the classical information transmission over a noisy quantum channel, with separable encoding by the sender and limited resources provided by the receiver's pre-shared ancilla. Instead of a pure state, we consider the signal-ancilla pair in a mixed state, purified by a "witness". Thus, the signal-witness correlation limits the resource available from the signal-ancilla correlation. Our formula characterizes the utility of different forms of resources, including noisy or limited entanglement assistance, for classical communication. With separable encoding, the send…
In this paper, we propose a resources-optimal linear-optical scheme for quantum nondemolition detection of single-photon presence. By measuring the state of ancillary photons, the presence of a photon in signal mode is revealed with a success probability of 1/2 without any disturbance to its state. We also show how to tune the setup to perform quantum nondemolition measurement of the signal photon state, and we provide tradeoff between the extracted information and the signal state disturbance. Moreover, the optimality of resources and methods by which to increase the success probability are d…
Transport of excitons through transfer networks is a unique example where the interplay between quantum coherence and environment-induced dephasing leads to non-trivial effects. One exciting example is the "environment-assisted quantum transport", (ENAQT), where, counter intuitively, the environment interrupts quantum transport in a way that enhances the transfer efficiency. Here we show that the interplay between dephasing and quantum coherence can lead to an additional function in exciton transport - photo-protection, that is the reduction of current upon increased excitation. We start by de…
Large weak values have been used to amplify the sensitivity of a linear response signal for detecting changes in a small parameter, which has also enabled a simple method for precise parameter estimation. However, producing a large weak value requires a low postselection probability for an ancilla degree of freedom, which limits the utility of the technique. We propose an improvement to this method that uses entanglement to increase the efficiency. We show that by entangling and postselecting $n$ ancillas, the postselection probability can be increased by a factor of $n$ while keeping the weak…
The protection of the coherence of open quantum systems against the influence of their environment is a very topical issue. A scheme is proposed here which protects a general quantum system from the action of a set of arbitrary uncontrolled unitary evolutions. This method draws its inspiration from ideas of standard error-correction (ancilla adding, coding and decoding) and the Quantum Zeno Effect. A pedagogical demonstration of our method on a simple atomic system, namely a Rubidium isotope, is proposed.
Entanglement and quantum squeezing have wide applications in quantum technologies due to their non-classical characteristics. Here we study entanglement and quantum squeezing in an open spin-optomechanical system, in which a Rabi model (a spin coupled to the mechanical oscillator) is coupled to an ancillary cavity field via a quadratic optomechanical coupling. We find that their performances can be significantly modulated via the photon of the ancillary cavity, which comes from photon-dependent spin-oscillator coupling and detuning. Specifically, a fully switchable spin-oscillator entanglement…
We propose a novel symmetrization procedure to beat decoherence for oscillator-assisted quantum gate operations. The enacted symmetry is related to the global geometric features of qubits transformation based on ancillary oscillator modes, e.g. phonons in an ion-trap system. It is shown that the devised multi-circuit symmetrized evolution endows the system with a two-fold resilience against decoherence: insensitivity to thermal fluctuations and quantum dissipation.
The standard procedure for quantum process tomography (QPT) involves applying the quantum process on a system initialized in each of a complete set of orthonormal states. The corresponding outputs are then characterized by quantum state tomography (QST), which itself requires the measurement of non-commuting observables realized by independent experiments on identically prepared system states. Thus QPT procedure demands a number of independent measurements, and moreover, this number increases rapidly with the size of the system. However, the total number of independent measurements can be grea…
We show that weighted unitary 2-designs define optimal measurements on the system-ancilla output state for ancilla-assisted process tomography of unital quantum channels. Examples include complete sets of mutually unbiased unitary-operator bases. Each of these specifies a minimal series of optimal orthogonal measurements. General quantum channels are also considered.
The temporal evolution of entanglement between a noisy system and an ancillary system is analyzed in the context of continuous time open quantum system dynamics. Focusing on a couple of analytically solvable models for qubit systems, we study how Markovian and non-Markovian characteristics influence the problem, discussing in particular their associated entanglement-breaking regimes. These performances are compared with those one could achieve when the environment of the system is forced to return to its input configuration via periodic instantaneous resetting procedures.
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…
Universal Protection of Quantum States from Decoherence
Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica（意大利国家计量研究所）；Politecnico di Torino（都灵理工大学）；Università degli Studi di Torino（都灵大学）；Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare（意大利国家核物理研究所）
We show how to protect a stream of quantum information from decoherence induced by a noisy quantum communication channel. We exploit preshared entanglement and a convolutional coding structure to develop a theory of entanglement-assisted quantum convolutional coding. Our construction produces a Calderbank-Shor-Steane (CSS) entanglement-assisted quantum convolutional code from two arbitrary classical binary convolutional codes. The rate and error-correcting properties of the classical convolutional codes directly determine the corresponding properties of the resulting entanglement-assisted quan…
