We show how to convert between partially coherent superpositions of a single photon with the vacuum using linear optics and postselection based on homodyne measurements. We introduce a generalized quantum efficiency for such states and show that any conversion that decreases this quantity is possible. We also prove that our scheme is optimal by showing that no linear optical scheme with generalized conditional measurements, and with one single-rail qubit input can improve the generalized efficiency.
A novel use of Majorana geometric representation brings out distinct entanglement families of permutation symmetric states of qubits. The paradigmatic W and GHZ (Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger) states of three qubits respectively contain two and three independent Majorana spinors. Another unique state with three distinct Majorana spinors -- constructed through a permutation symmetric superposition of two up qubits and one down qubit (W state) and its obverse state Wbar) exhibits genuine three-party entanglement, which is robust under loss of a qubit. While the GHZ state has irreducible correlatio…
Today's most widely used method of encoding quantum information in optical qubits is the dual-rail basis, often carried out through the polarisation of a single photon. On the other hand, many stationary carriers of quantum information - such as atoms - couple to light via the single-rail encoding in which the qubit is encoded in the number of photons. As such, interconversion between the two encodings is paramount in order to achieve cohesive quantum networks. In this paper, we demonstrate this by generating an entangled resource between the two encodings and using it to teleport a dual-rail …
We study quantum teleportation between two different types of optical qubits using hybrid entanglement as a quantum channel under decoherence effects. One type of qubit employs the vacuum and single photon states for the basis, called a single-rail single-photon qubit, and the other utilizes coherent states of opposite phases. We find that teleportation from a single-rail single-photon qubit to a coherent state qubit is better than the opposite direction in terms of fidelity and success probability. We compare our results with those using a different type of hybrid entanglement between a polar…
Doubling Qubits in a Trapped-Ion System via Vibrational Dual-Rail Encoding
State Key Laboratory of Low Dimensional Quantum Physics, Department of Physics, Tsinghua University（清华大学物理系低维量子物理国家重点实验室）；Korea Institute for Advanced Study（韩国高等科学研究院）；Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences（北京量子信息科学研究院）；Frontier Science Center for Quantum Information（量子信息前沿科学中心）；Department of Chemistry, Yonsei University（延世大学化学系）
Photon-Number Conserved Universal Quantum Logic Employing Continuous-Time Quantum Walk on Dual-Rail Qubit Arrays
Southern University of Science and Technology（南方科技大学）；Shenzhen Institute for Quantum Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology（南方科技大学量子科学工程学院）；Lanzhou University（兰州大学）；Cuiying Honors College, Lanzhou University（兰州大学萃英学院）；International Quantum Academy, Shenzhen（深圳国际量子研究院）
We analyze the problem of increasing the efficiency of single-photon sources or single-rail photonic qubits via linear optical processing and destructive conditional measurements. In contrast to previous work we allow for the use of coherent states and do not limit to photon-counting measurements. We conjecture that it is not possible to increase the efficiency, prove this conjecture for several important special cases, and provide extensive numerical results for the general case.
Generation of frequency-bin-encoded dual-rail cluster states via time-frequency multiplexing of microwave photonic qubits
RIKEN Center for Quantum Computing (RQC)（理化学研究所量子计算中心）；Department of Applied Physics, Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo（东京大学大学院工学系研究科应用物理系）；Department of Applied Physics, Stanford University（斯坦福大学应用物理系）
Logical multi-qubit entanglement with dual-rail superconducting qubits
International Quantum Academy, Shenzhen（国际量子研究院）；Shenzhen Institute for Quantum Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology（南方科技大学深圳量子科学与工程研究所）；Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Quantum Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology（南方科技大学广东省量子科学与工程重点实验室）
We investigate the performance of a Kennedy receiver, which is known as a beneficial tool in optical coherent communications, to the quantum state discrimination of the two superpositions of vacuum and single photon states corresponding to the $\hatσ_x$ eigenstates in the single-rail encoding of photonic qubits. We experimentally characterize the Kennedy receiver in vacuum-single photon two-dimensional space using quantum detector tomography and evaluate the achievable discrimination error probability from the reconstructed measurement operators. We furthermore derive the minimum error rate ob…
We propose a quantum noise eater for a single qubit and experimentally verify its performance for recovery of a superposition carried by a dual-rail photonic qubit. We consider a case when only one of the rails (e.g., one of interferometric arms) is vulnerable to noise. A coherent but randomly arriving photon penetrating into this single rail causes a change of its state, which results in an error in a subsequent quantum information processing. We theoretically prove and experimentally demonstrate a conditional full recovery of the superposition by this quantum noise eater.
Fast, High-Fidelity Erasure Detection of Dual-Rail Qubits with Symmetrically Coupled Readout
Amazon Center for Quantum Computing（亚马逊量子计算中心）；Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, California Institute of Technology（加州理工学院量子信息与物质研究所）；Thomas J. Watson, Sr., Laboratory of Applied Physics, California Institute of Technology（加州理工学院托马斯·J·沃森 Sr. 应用物理实验室）
Boosted linear-optical measurements on single-rail qubits with unentangled ancillas
College of Optical Sciences, University of Arizona（亚利桑那大学光学科学学院）；Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park（马里兰大学电气与计算机工程系）
We discuss techniques for producing, manipulating and measureing qubits encoded optically as vacuum and single photon states. We show that a universal set of non-deterministic gates can be constructed using linear optics and photon counting. We investigate the efficacy of a test gate given realistic detector efficiencies.
Photon counting induces an effective nonlinear optical phase shift on certain states derived by linear optics from single photons. Although this no nlinearity is nondeterministic, it is sufficient in principle to allow scalable linear optics quantum computation (LOQC). The most obvious way to encode a qubit optically is as a superposition of the vacuum and a single photon in one mode -- so-called "single-rail" logic. Until now this approach was thought to be prohibitively expensive (in resources) compared to "dual-rail" logic where a qubit is stored by a photon across two modes. Here we attack…
Quantum memory for flying optical qubits is a key enabler for a wide range of applications in quantum information science and technology. A critical figure of merit is the overall storage-and-retrieval efficiency. So far, despite the recent achievements of efficient memories for light pulses, the storage of qubits has suffered from limited efficiency. Here we report on a quantum memory for polarization qubits that combines an average conditional fidelity above 99% and an efficiency equal to (68$\pm$ 2)%, thereby demonstrating a reversible qubit mapping where more information is retrieved than …
Heisenberg spin chains can act as quantum wires transferring quantum states either perfectly or with high fidelity. Gaussian packets of excitations passing through dual rails can encode the two states of a logical qubit, depending on which rail is empty and which rail is carrying the packet. With extra interactions in one or between different chains, one can introduce interaction zones in arrays of such chains, where specific one or two qubit gates act on any qubit which passes through these interaction zones. Therefore universal quantum computation is made possible in a static way where no ex…
We show that optically encoded two-qubit Bell states can be unambiguously discriminated with a success probability of more than 50% in both single-rail and dual-rail encodings by using active linear-optical resources that include Gaussian squeezing operations. These results are in contrast to the well-known upper bound of 50% for unambiguous discrimination of dual-rail Bell states using passive, static linear optics and arbitrarily many vacuum modes. We present experimentally feasible schemes that improve the success probability to 64.3% in dual-rail and to 62.5% in single-rail for a uniform r…
Photonic quantum systems are among the most promising architectures for quantum computers. It is well known that for dual-rail photons effective non-linearities and near-deterministic non-trivial two-qubit gates can be achieved via the measurement process and by introducing ancillary photons. While in principle this opens a legitimate path to scalable linear optical quantum computing, the technical requirements are still very challenging and thus other optical encodings are being actively investigated. One of the alternatives is to use single-rail encoded photons, where entangled states can be…
We introduce a scheme for the parallel storage of frequency separated signals in an optical memory and demonstrate that this dual-rail storage is a suitable memory for high fidelity frequency qubits. The two signals are stored simultaneously in the Zeeman-split Raman absorption lines of a cold atom ensemble using gradient echo memory techniques. Analysis of the split-Zeeman storage shows that the memory can be configured to preserve the relative amplitude and phase of the frequency separated signals. In an experimental demonstration dual-frequency pulses are recalled with 35% efficiency, 82% i…
Here, we numerically simulate probabilistic elementary entangling operations between rail-encoded photons for the purpose of scalable universal quantum computation or communication. We propose grouping logical qubits into single-photon blocks wherein single-qubit rotations and the CNOT gate are fully deterministic and simple to implement. Inter-block communication is then allowed through said probabilistic entangling operations. We find a promising trend in the increasing probability of successful inter-block communication as we increase the number of optical modes operated on by our elementar…
A single photon, delocalized over two optical modes, is characterized by means of quantum homodyne tomography. The reconstructed four-dimensional density matrix extends over the entire Hilbert space and thus reveals, for the first time, complete information about the dual-rail optical quantum bit as a state of the electromagnetic field. The experimental data violate the Bell inequality albeit with a loophole similar to the detection loophole in photon counting experiments.
We propose and analyse a scheme for single-rail-encoded arbitrary multi-qubit quantum-state generation to provide a versatile tool for quantum optics and quantum information applications. Our scheme can be realized, for small numbers of qubits, with current technologies using single photon inputs, passive linear optics, and heralding measurements. The particular examples of two- and three-qubit cluster states are studied in detail. We show that such states can be prepared with a high probability of success. Our analysis quantifies the effects of experimentally relevant imperfections and ineffi…
Quantum measurement is essential to both the foundations and practical applications of quantum information science. Among many possible models of quantum measurement, feedback measurements that dynamically update their physical structure are highly interesting due to their flexibility which enables a wide range of measurements that might otherwise be hard to implement. Here we investigate by detector tomography a measurement consisting of a displacement operation combined with photon detection followed by a real time feedback operation. We design the measurement in order to discriminate the su…
Teleportation plays an important role in the communication of quantum information between the nodes of a quantum network and is viewed as an essential ingredient for long-distance Quantum Cryptography. We describe a method to teleport the quantum information carried by a photon in a superposition of a number $d$ of light modes (a "qudit") by the help of $d$ additional photons based on transcription. A qudit encoded into a single excitation of $d$ light modes (in our case Laguerre-Gauss modes which carry orbital angular momentum) is transcribed to $d$ single-rail photonic qubits, which are spat…
Deterministic sources of high-fidelity entangled qubit pairs encoded in the dual-rail photonic basis, i.e., presence of a single photon in one of two orthogonal modes, are a key enabling technology of many applications of quantum information processing, including high-rate high-fidelity quantum communications over long distances. The most popular and mature sources of such photonic entanglement, e.g., those that leverage spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) or spontaneous four-wave mixing (sFWM), generate an entangled (so-called, continuous-variable) quantum state that contains contri…
Light is an irreplaceable means of communication among various quantum information processing and storage devices. Due to their different physical nature, some of these devices couple more strongly to discrete, and some to continuous degrees of freedom of a quantum optical wave. It is therefore desirable to develop a technological capability to interconvert quantum information encoded in these degrees of freedom. Here we generate and characterize an entangled state between a dual-rail (polarization-encoded) single-photon qubit and a qubit encoded as a superposition of opposite-amplitude cohere…
In this work, we investigate the controlled teleportation protocol using optical qubits within the single-rail logic. The protocol makes use of an entangled tripartite state shared by the controller and two further parties (users) who will perform standard teleportation. The goal of the protocol is to guarantee that the teleportation is successful only with the permission of the controller. Optical qubits based on either superpositions of vacuum and single-photon states or superposition of coherent states are employed here to encode a tripartite maximal slice state upon which the protocol is b…
We show how to make event-ready multi-partite entanglement between qubits which may be encoded on photons or matter systems. Entangled states of matter systems, which can also act as single photon sources, can be generated using the entangling operation presented in quant-ph/0408040. We show how to entangle such sources with photon qubits, which may be encoded in the dual rail, polarization or time-bin degrees of freedom. We subsequently demonstrate how projective measurements of the matter qubits can be used to create entangled states of the photons alone. The state of the matter qubits is in…
We demonstrate a scheme for quantum communication between the ends of an array of coupled cavities. Each cavity is doped with a single two level system (atoms or quantum dots) and the detuning of the atomic level spacing and photonic frequency is appropriately tuned to achieve photon blockade in the array. We show that in such a regime, the array can simulate a dual rail quantum state transfer protocol where the arrival of quantum information at the receiving cavity is heralded through a fluorescence measurement. Communication is also possible between any pair of cavities of a network of conne…
We report the experimental demonstration of a quantum teleportation protocol with a semiconductor single photon source. Two qubits, a target and an ancilla, each defined by a single photon occupying two optical modes (dual-rail qubit), were generated independently by the single photon source. Upon measurement of two modes from different qubits and postselection, the state of the two remaining modes was found to reproduce the state of the target qubit. In particular, the coherence between the target qubit modes was transferred to the output modes to a large extent. The observed fidelity is 80 %…
Transfer of quantum information between physical systems of a different nature is a central matter in quantum technologies. Particularly challenging is the transfer between discrete- and continuous degrees of freedom of various harmonic oscillator systems. Here we implement a protocol for teleporting a continuous-variable optical qubit, encoded by means of coherent states, onto a discrete-variable, single-rail qubit - a superposition of the vacuum- and single-photon optical states - via a hybrid entangled resource. We test our protocol on coherent states of different phases and obtain the tele…
We describe a system composed of two coupled optical cavity modes with a coupling modulated by a bulk mechanical resonator. In addition, one of the cavity modes is irreversibly coupled to a single photon source. Our scheme is an opto-mechanical realisation of the Jaynes-Cummings model where the qubit is a dual rail optical qubit while the bosonic degree of freedom is a matter degree of freedom realised as the bulk mechanical excitation. We show the possibility of engineering phonon number states of the mechanical oscillator in such a system by computing the conditional state of the mechanics a…
Converting qubit relaxation into erasures with a single fluxonium
Quantum Science Center of Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area（粤港澳大湾区量子科学中心）；Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences（北京量子信息科学研究院）；Hefei National Laboratory（合肥国家实验室）
Surface acoustic waves (SAWs) strongly modulate the shallow electric potential in piezoelectric materials. In semiconductor heterostructures such as GaAs/AlGaAs, SAWs can thus be employed to transfer individual electrons between distant quantum dots. This transfer mechanism makes SAW technologies a promising candidate to convey quantum information through a circuit of quantum logic gates. Here we present two essential building blocks of such a SAW-driven quantum circuit. First, we implement a directional coupler allowing to partition a flying electron arbitrarily into two paths of transportati…
Universal gate sets for quantum computing have been known for decades, yet no universal gate set has been proposed for particle-conserving unitaries, which are the operations of interest in quantum chemistry. In this work, we show that controlled single-excitation gates in the form of Givens rotations are universal for particle-conserving unitaries. Single-excitation gates describe an arbitrary $U(2)$ rotation on the two-qubit subspace spanned by the states $|01\rangle, |10\rangle$, while leaving other states unchanged -- a transformation that is analogous to a single-qubit rotation on a dual-…
Here, we study the capacity of a quantum channel, assuming linear optical encoding, as a function of available photons and optical modes. First, we observe that substantial improvement is made possible by not restricting ourselves to a rail-encoded qubit basis. Then, we derive an analytic formula for general channel capacity and show that this capacity is achieved without requiring the use of entangling operations typically required for scalable universal quantum computation, e.g. KLM measurement-assisted transformations. As an example, we provide an explicit encoding scheme using the resource…
We interface a spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC) crystal and a cold atomic ensemble and demonstrate a highly efficient quantum memory through polarization-encoded single-photon qubits. Specifically, narrowband heralded single photons from a cavity-enhanced SPDC source is stored using cold atomic ensemble, with ~70% storage-and-retrieval efficiency and ~10$μ$s storage time at 50% efficiency. To prevent the degradation after storage, we also manipulate the single-photon wave profile so that the retrieved non-classical nature of single photon is preserved. On the other hand, the dual-…
