One of the most promising applications of quantum networks is entanglement assisted sensing. The field of quantum metrology exploits quantum correlations to improve the precision bound for applications such as precision timekeeping, field sensing, and biological imaging. When measuring multiple spatially distributed parameters, current literature focuses on quantum entanglement in the discrete variable case, and quantum squeezing in the continuous variable case, distributed amongst all of the sensors in a given network. However, it can be difficult to ensure all sensors pre-share entanglement of sufficiently high fidelity. This work probes the space between fully entangled and fully classical sensing networks by modeling a star network with probabilistic entanglement generation that is attempting to estimate the average of local parameters. The quantum Fisher information is used to determine which protocols best utilize entanglement as a resource for different network conditions. It is shown that without entanglement distillation there is a threshold fidelity below which classical sensing is preferable. For a network with a given number of sensors and links characterized by a certain initial fidelity and probability of success, this work outlines when and how to use entanglement, when to store it, and when it needs to be distilled.
Stabilizer states are a prime resource for a number of applications in quantum information science, such as secret-sharing and measurement-based quantum computation. This motivates us to study the entanglement of noisy stabilizer states across a bipartition. We show that the spectra of the corresponding reduced states can be expressed in terms of properties of an associated stabilizer code. In particular, this allows us to show that the coherent information is related to the so-called syndrome entropy of the underlying code. We use this viewpoint to find stabilizer states that are resilient against noise, allowing for more robust entanglement distribution in near-term quantum networks. We specialize our results to the case of graph states, where the found connections with stabilizer codes reduces back to classical linear codes for dephasing noise. On our way we provide an alternative proof of the fact that every qubit stabilizer code is equivalent up to single-qubit Clifford gates to a graph code.
Graph states are a key resource for a number of applications in quantum information theory. Due to the inherent noise in noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) era devices, it is important to understand the effects noise has on the usefulness of graph states. We consider a noise model where the initial qubits undergo depolarizing noise before the application of the CZ operations that generate edges between qubits situated at the nodes of the resulting graph state. For this model we develop a method for calculating the coherent information -- a lower bound on the rate at which entanglement can be distilled, across a bipartition of the graph state. We also identify some patterns on how adding more nodes or edges affects the bipartite distillable entanglement. As an application, we find a family of graph states that maintain a strictly positive coherent information for any amount of (non-maximal) depolarizing noise.
Multi-qubit photonic graph states are necessary for quantum communication and computation. Preparing photonic graph states using probabilistic stitching of single photons using linear optics results in a formidable resource requirement due to the need of multiplexing. Quantum emitters present a viable solution to prepare photonic graph states, as they enable controlled production of photons entangled with the emitter qubit, and deterministic two-qubit interactions among emitters. A handful of emitters often suffice to generate useful photonic graph states that would otherwise require millions of single photon sources using the linear-optics method. But, photon loss poses an impediment to this method due to the large depth, i.e., age of the oldest photon, of the graph state, given the typically large number of slow and noisy two-qubit CNOT gates required on emitters. We propose an algorithm that can trade the number of emitters with the graph-state depth, while minimizing the number of emitter CNOTs. We apply our algorithm to generating a repeater graph state (RGS) for all-photonic repeaters. We find that our scheme achieves a far superior rate-vs.-distance performance than using the least number of emitters needed to generate the RGS. Yet, our scheme is able to get the same performance as the linear-optics method of generating the RGS where each emitter is used as a single-photon source, but with orders of magnitude fewer emitters.
We study entanglement generation in a quantum network where repeater nodes can perform $n$-qubit Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger(GHZ) swaps, i.e., projective measurements, to fuse $n$ imperfect-Fidelity entangled-state fragments. We show that the distance-independent entanglement distribution rate found previously for this protocol, assuming perfectly-entangled states at the link level, does not survive. This is true also in two modified protocols we study: one that incorporates $l \to 1$ link-level distillation and another that spatially constrains the repeater nodes involved in the swaps. We obtain analytical formulas for a GHZ swap of multiple Werner states, which might be of independent interest. Whether the distance-independent entanglement rate might re-emerge with a spatio-temporally-optimized scheduling of GHZ swaps and multi-site block-distillation codes remains open.
There is a folkloric belief that a depth-$\Theta(m)$ quantum circuit is needed to estimate the trace of the product of $m$ density matrices (i.e., a multivariate trace), a subroutine crucial to applications in condensed matter and quantum information science. We prove that this belief is overly conservative by constructing a constant quantum-depth circuit for the task, inspired by the method of Shor error correction. Furthermore, our circuit demands only local gates in a two dimensional circuit -- we show how to implement it in a highly parallelized way on an architecture similar to that of Google's Sycamore processor. With these features, our algorithm brings the central task of multivariate trace estimation closer to the capabilities of near-term quantum processors. We instantiate the latter application with a theorem on estimating nonlinear functions of quantum states with "well-behaved" polynomial approximations.
In this work, we introduce multipartite intrinsic non-locality as a method for quantifying resources in the multipartite scenario of device-independent (DI) conference key agreement. We prove that multipartite intrinsic non-locality is additive, convex, and monotone under a class of free operations called local operations and common randomness. As one of our technical contributions, we establish a chain rule for two variants of multipartite mutual information, which we then use to prove that multipartite intrinsic non-locality is additive. This chain rule may be of independent interest in other contexts. All of these properties of multipartite intrinsic non-locality are helpful in establishing the main result of our paper: multipartite intrinsic non-locality is an upper bound on secret key rate in the general multipartite scenario of DI conference key agreement. We discuss various examples of DI conference key protocols and compare our upper bounds for these protocols with known lower bounds. Finally, we calculate upper bounds on recent experimental realizations of DI quantum key distribution.
Resource theories in quantum information science are helpful for the study and quantification of the performance of information-processing tasks that involve quantum systems. These resource theories also find applications in other areas of study; e.g., the resource theories of entanglement and coherence have found use and implications in the study of quantum thermodynamics and memory effects in quantum dynamics. In this paper, we introduce the resource theory of unextendibility, which is associated to the inability of extending quantum entanglement in a given quantum state to multiple parties. The free states in this resource theory are the k-extendible states, and the free channels are k-extendible channels, which preserve the class of k-extendible states. We make use of this resource theory to derive non-asymptotic, upper bounds on the rate at which quantum communication or entanglement preservation is possible by utilizing an arbitrary quantum channel a finite number of times, along with the assistance of k-extendible channels at no cost. We then show that the bounds obtained are significantly tighter than previously known bounds for quantum communication over both the depolarizing and erasure channels.
In this work, we develop upper bounds for key rates for device-independent quantum key distribution (DI-QKD) protocols and devices. We study the reduced cc-squashed entanglement and show that it is a convex functional. As a result, we show that the convex hull of the currently known bounds is a tighter upper bound on the device-independent key rates of standard CHSH-based protocol. We further provide tighter bounds for DI-QKD key rates achievable by any protocol applied to the CHSH-based device. This bound is based on reduced relative entropy of entanglement optimized over decompositions into local and non-local parts. In the dynamical scenario of quantum channels, we obtain upper bounds for device-independent private capacity for the CHSH based protocols. We show that the device-independent private capacity for the CHSH based protocols on depolarizing and erasure channels is limited by the secret key capacity of dephasing channels.
Distribution and distillation of entanglement over quantum networks is a basic task for Quantum Internet applications. A fundamental question is then to determine the ultimate performance of entanglement distribution over a given network. Although this question has been extensively explored for bipartite entanglement-distribution scenarios, less is known about multipartite entanglement distribution. Here we establish the fundamental limit of distributing multipartite entanglement, in the form of GHZ states, over a quantum network. In particular, we determine the multipartite entanglement distribution capacity of a quantum network, in which the nodes are connected through lossy bosonic quantum channels. This setting corresponds to a practical quantum network consisting of optical links. The result is also applicable to the distribution of multipartite secret key, known as common key, for both a fully quantum network and trusted-node based quantum key distribution network. Our results set a general benchmark for designing a network topology and network quantum repeaters (or key relay in trusted nodes) to realize efficient GHZ state/common key distribution in both fully quantum and trusted-node-based networks. We show an example of how to overcome this limit by introducing a network quantum repeater. Our result follows from an upper bound on distillable GHZ entanglement introduced here, called the "recursive-cut-and-merge" bound, which constitutes major progress on a longstanding fundamental problem in multipartite entanglement theory. This bound allows for determining the distillable GHZ entanglement for a class of states consisting of products of bipartite pure states.
The security of quantum key distribution has traditionally been analyzed in either the asymptotic or non-asymptotic regimes. In this paper, we provide a bridge between these two regimes, by determining second-order coding rates for key distillation in quantum key distribution under collective attacks. Our main result is a formula that characterizes the backoff from the known asymptotic formula for key distillation -- our formula incorporates the reliability and security of the protocol, as well as the mutual information variances to the legitimate receiver and the eavesdropper. In order to determine secure key rates against collective attacks, one should perform a joint optimization of the Holevo information and the Holevo information variance to the eavesdropper. We show how to do so by analyzing several examples, including the six-state, BB84, and continuous-variable quantum key distribution protocols (the last involving Gaussian modulation of coherent states along with heterodyne detection). The technical contributions of this paper include one-shot and second-order analyses of private communication over a compound quantum wiretap channel with fixed marginal and key distillation over a compound quantum wiretap source with fixed marginal. We also establish the second-order asymptotics of the smooth max-relative entropy of quantum states acting on a separable Hilbert space, and we derive a formula for the Holevo information variance of a Gaussian ensemble of Gaussian states.
Probabilities of vibronic transitions in molecules are referred to as Franck-Condon factors (FCFs). Although several approaches for calculating FCFs have been developed, such calculations are still challenging. Recently it was shown that there exists a correspondence between the problem of calculating FCFs and boson sampling. However, if the output photon number distribution of boson sampling is sparse then it can be classically simulated. Exploiting these results, we develop a method to approximately reconstruct the distribution of FCFs of certain molecules. We demonstrate this method by applying it to formic acid and thymine at $0$ K. In our method, we first obtain the marginal photon number distributions for pairs of modes of a Gaussian state associated with the molecular transition. We then apply a compressive sensing method called polynomial-time matching pursuit to recover FCFs.
We consider discrete-modulation protocols for continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CV-QKD) that employ a modulation constellation consisting of a finite number of coherent states and that use a homodyne or a heterodyne-detection receiver. We establish a security proof for collective attacks in the asymptotic regime, and we provide a formula for an achievable secret-key rate. Previous works established security proofs for discrete-modulation CV-QKD protocols that use two or three coherent states. The main constituents of our approach include approximating a complex, isotropic Gaussian probability distribution by a finite-size Gauss-Hermite constellation, applying entropic continuity bounds, and leveraging previous security proofs for Gaussian-modulation protocols. As an application of our method, we calculate secret-key rates achievable over a lossy thermal bosonic channel. We show that the rates for discrete-modulation protocols approach the rates achieved by a Gaussian-modulation protocol as the constellation size is increased. For pure-loss channels, our results indicate that in the high-loss regime and for sufficiently large constellation size, the achievable key rates scale optimally, i.e., proportional to the channel's transmissivity.
In this paper, we introduce intrinsic non-locality as a quantifier for Bell non-locality, and we prove that it satisfies certain desirable properties such as faithfulness, convexity, and monotonicity under local operations and shared randomness. We then prove that intrinsic non-locality is an upper bound on the secret-key-agreement capacity of any device-independent protocol conducted using a device characterized by a correlation $p$. We also prove that intrinsic steerability is an upper bound on the secret-key-agreement capacity of any semi-device-independent protocol conducted using a device characterized by an assemblage $\hat{\rho}$. We also establish the faithfulness of intrinsic steerability and intrinsic non-locality. Finally, we prove that intrinsic non-locality is bounded from above by intrinsic steerability.
It is well known that for the discrimination of classical and quantum channels in the finite, non-asymptotic regime, adaptive strategies can give an advantage over non-adaptive strategies. However, Hayashi [IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory 55(8), 3807 (2009)] showed that in the asymptotic regime, the exponential error rate for the discrimination of classical channels is not improved in the adaptive setting. We extend this result in several ways. First, we establish the strong Stein's lemma for classical-quantum channels by showing that asymptotically the exponential error rate for classical-quantum channel discrimination is not improved by adaptive strategies. Second, we recover many other classes of channels for which adaptive strategies do not lead to an asymptotic advantage. Third, we give various converse bounds on the power of adaptive protocols for general asymptotic quantum channel discrimination. Intriguingly, it remains open whether adaptive protocols can improve the exponential error rate for quantum channel discrimination in the asymmetric Stein setting. Our proofs are based on the concept of amortized distinguishability of quantum channels, which we analyse using data-processing inequalities.
In this paper, we introduce the resource theory of unextendibility as a relaxation of the resource theory of entanglement. The free states in this resource theory are the k-extendible states, associated with the inability to extend quantum entanglement in a given quantum state to multiple parties. The free channels are k-extendible channels, which preserve the class of k-extendible states. We define several quantifiers of unextendibility by means of generalized divergences and establish their properties. By utilizing this resource theory, we obtain non-asymptotic upper bounds on the rate at which quantum communication or entanglement preservation is possible over a finite number of uses of an arbitrary quantum channel assisted by k-extendible channels at no cost. These bounds are significantly tighter than previously known bounds for both the depolarizing and erasure channels. Finally, we revisit the pretty strong converse for the quantum capacity of antidegradable channels and establish an upper bound on the non-asymptotic quantum capacity of these channels.
We study quantum channels that are close to another channel with weakly additive Holevo information and derive upper bounds on their classical capacity. Examples of channels with weakly additive Holevo information are entanglement-breaking channels, unital qubit channels, and Hadamard channels. Related to the method of approximate degradability, we define approximation parameters for each class above that measure how close an arbitrary channel is to satisfying the respective property. This gives us upper bounds on the classical capacity in terms of functions of the approximation parameters, as well as an outer bound on the dynamic capacity region of a quantum channel. Since these parameters are defined in terms of the diamond distance, the upper bounds can be computed efficiently using semidefinite programming (SDP). We exhibit the usefulness of our method with two example channels: a convex mixture of amplitude damping and depolarizing noise, and a composition of amplitude damping and dephasing noise. For both channels, our bounds perform well in certain regimes of the noise parameters in comparison to a recently derived SDP upper bound on the classical capacity. Along the way, we define the notion of a generalized channel divergence (which includes the diamond distance as an example), and we prove that for jointly covariant channels these quantities are maximized by purifications of a state invariant under the covariance group. This latter result may be of independent interest.
This paper defines the amortized entanglement of a quantum channel as the largest difference in entanglement between the output and the input of the channel, where entanglement is quantified by an arbitrary entanglement measure. We prove that the amortized entanglement of a channel obeys several desirable properties, and we also consider special cases such as the amortized relative entropy of entanglement and the amortized Rains relative entropy. These latter quantities are shown to be single-letter upper bounds on the secret-key-agreement and PPT-assisted quantum capacities of a quantum channel, respectively. Of especial interest is a uniform continuity bound for these latter two special cases of amortized entanglement, in which the deviation between the amortized entanglement of two channels is bounded from above by a simple function of the diamond norm of their difference and the output dimension of the channels. We then define approximately teleportation- and positive-partial-transpose-simulable (PPT-simulable) channels as those that are close in diamond norm to a channel which is either exactly teleportation- or PPT-simulable, respectively. These results then lead to single-letter upper bounds on the secret-key-agreement and PPT-assisted quantum capacities of channels that are approximately teleportation- or PPT-simulable, respectively. Finally, we generalize many of the concepts in the paper to the setting of general resource theories, defining the amortized resourcefulness of a channel and the notion of $\nu$-freely-simulable channels, connecting these concepts in an operational way as well.
Upper bounds on the secret-key-agreement capacity of a quantum channel serve as a way to assess the performance of practical quantum-key-distribution protocols conducted over that channel. In particular, if a protocol employs a quantum repeater, achieving secret-key rates exceeding these upper bounds is a witness to having a working quantum repeater. In this paper, we extend a recent advance [Liuzzo-Scorpo et al., arXiv:1705.03017] in the theory of the teleportation simulation of single-mode phase-insensitive Gaussian channels such that it now applies to the relative entropy of entanglement measure. As a consequence of this extension, we find tighter upper bounds on the non-asymptotic secret-key-agreement capacity of the lossy thermal bosonic channel than were previously known. The lossy thermal bosonic channel serves as a more realistic model of communication than the pure-loss bosonic channel, because it can model the effects of eavesdropper tampering and imperfect detectors. An implication of our result is that the previously known upper bounds on the secret-key-agreement capacity of the thermal channel are too pessimistic for the practical finite-size regime in which the channel is used a finite number of times, and so it should now be somewhat easier to witness a working quantum repeater when using secret-key-agreement capacity upper bounds as a benchmark.
In [Gallego and Aolita, Physical Review X 5, 041008 (2015)], the authors proposed a definition for the relative entropy of steering and showed that the resulting quantity is a convex steering monotone. Here we advocate for a different definition for relative entropy of steering, based on well grounded concerns coming from quantum Shannon theory. We prove that this modified relative entropy of steering is a convex steering monotone. Furthermore, we establish that it is uniformly continuous and faithful, in both cases giving quantitative bounds that should be useful in applications. We also consider a restricted relative entropy of steering which is relevant for the case in which the free operations in the resource theory of steering have a more restricted form (the restricted operations could be more relevant in practical scenarios). The restricted relative entropy of steering is convex, monotone with respect to these restricted operations, uniformly continuous, and faithful.
Quantum steering has recently been formalized in the framework of a resource theory of steering, and several quantifiers have already been introduced. Here, we propose an information-theoretic quantifier for steering called intrinsic steerability, which uses conditional mutual information to measure the deviation of a given assemblage from one having a local hidden-state model. We thus relate conditional mutual information to quantum steering and introduce monotones that satisfy certain desirable properties. The idea behind the quantifier is to suppress the correlations that can be explained by an inaccessible quantum system and then quantify the remaining intrinsic correlations. A variant of the intrinsic steerability finds operational meaning as the classical communication cost of sending the measurement choice and outcome to an eavesdropper who possesses a purifying system of the underlying bipartite quantum state that is being measured.
Braneshop, and
the US National Science Foundation.
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