No Arabic abstract
Quantum error correcting codes (QECCs) are the means of choice whenever quantum systems suffer errors, e.g., due to imperfect devices, environments, or faulty channels. By now, a plethora of families of codes is known, but there is no universal approach to finding new or optimal codes for a certain task and subject to specific experimental constraints. In particular, once found, a QECC is typically used in very diverse contexts, while its resilience against errors is captured in a single figure of merit, the distance of the code. This does not necessarily give rise to the most efficient protection possible given a certain known error or a particular application for which the code is employed. In this paper, we investigate the loss channel, which plays a key role in quantum communication, and in particular in quantum key distribution over long distances. We develop a numerical set of tools that allows to optimize an encoding specifically for recovering lost particles without the need for backwards communication, where some knowledge about what was lost is available, and demonstrate its capabilities. This allows us to arrive at new codes ideal for the distribution of entangled states in this particular setting, and also to investigate if encoding in qudits or allowing for non-deterministic correction proves advantageous compared to known QECCs. While we here focus on the case of losses, our methodology is applicable whenever the errors in a system can be characterized by a known linear map.
We consider quantum error-correction codes for multimode bosonic systems, such as optical fields, that are affected by amplitude damping. Such a process is a generalization of an erasure channel. We demonstrate that the most accessible method of transforming optical systems with the help of passive linear networks has limited usefulness in preparing and manipulating such codes. These limitations stem directly from the recoverability condition for one-photon loss. We introduce a three-photon code protecting against the first order of amplitude damping, i.e. a single photon loss, and discuss its preparation using linear optics with single-photon sources and conditional detection. Quantum state and process tomography in the code subspace can be implemented using passive linear optics and photon counting. An experimental proof-of-principle demonstration of elements of the proposed quantum error correction scheme for a one-photon erasure lies well within present technological capabilites.
The exchange interaction between identical qubits in a quantum information processor gives rise to unitary two-qubit errors. It is shown here that decoherence free subspaces (DFSs) for collective decoherence undergo Pauli errors under exchange, which however do not take the decoherence free states outside of the DFS. In order to protect DFSs against these errors it is sufficient to employ a recently proposed concatenated DFS-quantum error correcting code scheme [D.A. Lidar, D. Bacon and K.B. Whaley, Phys. Rev. Lett. {bf 82}, 4556 (1999)].
A significant obstacle for practical quantum computation is the loss of physical qubits in quantum computers, a decoherence mechanism most notably in optical systems. Here we experimentally demonstrate, both in the quantum circuit model and in the one-way quantum computer model, the smallest non-trivial quantum codes to tackle this problem. In the experiment, we encode single-qubit input states into highly-entangled multiparticle codewords, and we test their ability to protect encoded quantum information from detected one-qubit loss error. Our results prove the in-principle feasibility of overcoming the qubit loss error by quantum codes.
Quantum temporal correlations exhibited by violations of Leggett-Garg Inequality (LGI) and Temporal Steering Inequality (TSI) are in general found to be non-increasing under decoherence channels when probed on two-qubit pure entangled states. We study the action of decoherence channels, such as amplitude damping, phase-damping and depolarising channels when partial memory is introduced in a way such that two consecutive uses of the channels are time-correlated. We show that temporal correlations demonstrated by violations of the above temporal inequalities can be protected against decoherence using the effect of memory.
It is often accepted a priori that a face mask worn by an infected subject is effective to avoid the spreading of a respiratory disease, while a healthy person is not necessarily well protected when wearing the mask. Using a frugal stain technique, we quantify the ballistic droplets reaching a receptor from a jet-emitting source which mimics a coughing, sneezing or talking human: in real life, such droplets may host active SARS-CoV-2 virus able to replicate in the nasopharynx. We demonstrate that materials often used in home-made face masks block most of the droplets. We also show quantitatively that less liquid carried by ballistic droplets reaches a receptor when a blocking material is deployed near the source than when located near the receptor, which supports the paradigm that your face mask does protect you, but protects others even better than you.