We experimentally demonstrate the noiseless teleportation of a single photon by conditioning on quadrature Bell measurement results near the origin in phase space and thereby circumventing the photon loss that otherwise occurs even in optimal gain-tu
ned continuous-variable quantum teleportation. In general, thanks to this loss suppression, the noiseless conditional teleportation can preserve the negativity of the Wigner function for an arbitrary pure input state and an arbitrary pure entangled resource state. In our experiment, the positive value of the Wigner function at the origin for the unconditional output state, W(0,0) = 0.015 $pm$ 0.001, becomes clearly negative after conditioning, W(0,0) = $-$0.025 $pm$ 0.005, illustrating the advantage of noiseless conditional teleportation.
Highly nonclassical quantum states of light, characterized by Wigner functions with negative values, have been created so far only in a heralded fashion. In this case, the desired output emerges rarely and randomly from a quantum-state generator. An
important example is the heralded production of high-purity single-photon states, typically based on some nonlinear optical interaction. In contrast, on-demand single-photon sources were also reported, exploiting the quantized level structure of matter systems. These sources, however, lead to highly impure output states, composed mostly of vacuum. While such impure states may still exhibit certain single-photon-like features such as anti-bunching, they are not enough nonclassical for advanced quantum information processing. On the other hand, the intrinsic randomness of pure, heralded states can be circumvented by first storing and then releasing them on demand. Here we propose such a controlled release, and we experimentally demonstrate it for heralded single photons. We employ two optical cavities, where the photons are both created and stored inside one cavity, and finally released through a dynamical tuning of the other cavity. We demonstrate storage times of up to 300 ns, while keeping the single-photon purity around 50% after storage. This is the first demonstration of a negative Wigner function at the output of an on-demand photon source or a quantum memory. In principle, our storage system is compatible with all kinds of nonclassical states, including those known to be essential for many advanced quantum information protocols.
We implement the squeezing operation as a genuine quantum gate, deterministically and reversibly acting `online upon an input state no longer restricted to the set of Gaussian states. More specifically, by applying an efficient and robust squeezing o
peration for the first time to non-Gaussian states, we demonstrate a two-way conversion between a particle-like single-photon state and a wave-like superposition of coherent states. Our squeezing gate is reliable enough to preserve the negativities of the corresponding Wigner functions. This demonstration represents an important and necessary step towards hybridizing discrete and continuous quantum protocols.
We experimentally demonstrate phase-insensitive linear optical amplification which preserves the idler at the output. Since our amplification operation is unitary up to small excess noise, it is reversible beyond the classical limit. The entanglement
between the two output modes is the resource for the reversibility. The amplification gain of 2.0 is demonstrated. In addition, combining this amplifier with a beamsplitter, we also demonstrate approximate cloning of coherent states where an anticlone is present. We investigate the reversibility by reconstructing the initial state from the output correlations, and the results are slightly beyond the cloning limit. Furthermore, full characterization of the amplifier and cloner is given by using coherent states with several different mean values as inputs. Our amplifier is based on linear optics, offline preparation of nonclassical ancillas, and homodyne measurements followed by feedforward. Squeezed states are used as the ancillas, and nonlinear optical effects are exploited only for their generation. The ancillas introduce nonclassicality into the amplifying operation, making entanglement at the output.
The sum gate is the canonical two-mode gate for universal quantum computation based on continuous quantum variables. It represents the natural analogue to a qubit C-NOT gate. In addition, the continuous-variable gate describes a quantum nondemolition
(QND) interaction between the quadrature components of two light fields. We experimentally demonstrate a QND sum gate, employing the scheme by R. Filip, P. Marek, and U.L. Andersen [pra {bf 71}, 042308 (2005)], solely based on offline squeezed states, homodyne measurements, and feedforward. The results are verified by simultaneously satisfying the criteria for QND measurements in both conjugate quadratures.
