No Arabic abstract
We consider distributed sensing of non-local quantities. We introduce quantum enhanced protocols to directly measure any (scalar) field with a specific spatial dependence by placing sensors at appropriate positions and preparing a spatially distributed entangled quantum state. Our scheme has optimal Heisenberg scaling and is completely unaffected by noise on other processes with different spatial dependence than the signal. We consider both Fisher and Bayesian scenarios, and design states and settings to achieve optimal scaling. We explicitly demonstrate how to measure coefficients of spatial Taylor and Fourier series, and show that our approach can offer an exponential advantage as compared to strategies that do not make use of entanglement between different sites.
We investigate the effect of noisy channels in a classical information transfer through a multipartite state which acts as a substrate for the distributed quantum dense coding protocol between several senders and two receivers. The situation is qualitatively different from the case with one or more senders and a single receiver. We obtain an upper bound on the multipartite capacity which is tightened in case of the covariant noisy channel. We also establish a relation between the genuine multipartite entanglement of the shared state and the capacity of distributed dense coding using that state, both in the noiseless and the noisy scenarios. Specifically, we find that in the case of multiple senders and two receivers, the corresponding generalized Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states possess higher dense coding capacities as compared to a significant fraction of pure states having the same multipartite entanglement.
Sequential Quantum Secret Sharing schemes (QSS) do not use entangled states for secret sharing, rather they rely on sequential operations of the players on a single state which is circulated between the players. In order to check the viability of these schemes under imperfect operations and noise in the channels, we consider one such scheme in detail and show that under moderate conditions it is still possible to extract viable secure shared keys in this scheme. Although we specifically consider only one type of sequential scheme and three different noise models, our method is fairly general to be applied to other QSS schemes and noise models as well.
Sensing in the presence of environmental noise is a problem of increasing practical interest. In a master equation description, where the state of the environment is unobserved, the effect of signal and noise is described by system operators only. In this context it is well-known that noise that is orthogonal on an external signal can be corrected for without perturbing the signal, while similarly efficient strategies for non-orthogonal signal and noise operators are not known. Here we make use of the fact that system-environment interaction typically arises via local two-body interactions describing the exchange of quanta between system and environment, which are observable in principle. That two-body-interactions are usually orthogonal on system operators, allows us to develop error corrected sensing supported by the observation of the quanta that are emitted into the environment. We describe such schemes and outline a realistic proof-of-principle experiment in an ion trap set-up.
Networking plays a ubiquitous role in quantum technology. It is an integral part of quantum communication and has significant potential for upscaling quantum computer technologies that are otherwise not scalable. Recently, it was realized that sensing of multiple spatially distributed parameters may also benefit from an entangled quantum network. Here we experimentally demonstrate how sensing of an averaged phase shift among four distributed nodes benefits from an entangled quantum network. Using a four-mode entangled continuous variable (CV) state, we demonstrate deterministic quantum phase sensing with a precision beyond what is attainable with separable probes. The techniques behind this result can have direct applications in a number of primitives ranging from biological imaging to quantum networks of atomic clocks.
We introduce a filter using a noise-free quantum buffer with large optical bandwidth that can both filter temporal-spectral modes, as well as inter-convert them and change their frequency. We show that such quantum buffers optimally filter out temporal-spectral noise; producing identical single-photons from many distinguishable noisy single-photon sources with the minimum required reduction in brightness. We then experimentally demonstrate a noise-free quantum buffer in a warm atomic system that is well matched to quantum dots and can outperform all intensity (incoherent) filtering schemes for increasing indistinguishability.