Volume 3, Issue 1

Superdense coding promises increased classical capacity and communication security but this advantage may be undermined by noise in the quantum channel. We present a numerical study of how forward error correction (FEC) applied to the encoded classical message can be used to mitigate against quantum channel noise. By studying the bit error rate under different FEC codes, we identify the unique role that burst errors play in superdense coding, and we show how these can be mitigated against by interleaving the FEC codewords prior to transmission. We conclude that classical FEC with interleaving is a useful method to improve the performance in near-term demonstrations of superdense coding.

Quantum mechanics establishes the ultimate limit to the scaling of the precision on any parameter, by identifying optimal probe states and measurements. While this paradigm is, at least in principle, adequate for the metrology of quantum channels involving the estimation of phase and loss parameters, we show that estimating the loss parameters associated with a quantum channel and a realistic quantum detector are fundamentally different. While Fock states are provably optimal for the former, we identify a crossover in the nature of the optimal probe state for estimating detector imperfections as a function of the loss parameter using Fisher information as a benchmark. We provide theoretical results for on-off and homodyne detectors, the most widely used detectors in quantum photonics technologies, when using Fock states and coherent states as probes.

Teleportation protocol is conventionally treated as a method for quantum state transfer between two spatially separated physical carriers. Recent experimental progress in manipulation with high-dimensional quantum systems opens a new framework for implementation of teleportation protocols. We show that the one-qubit teleportation can be considered as a state transfer between subspaces of the whole Hilbert space of an indivisible eight-dimensional system. We explicitly show all corresponding operations and discuss an alternative way of implementation of similar tasks.

Plenoptic imaging is a promising optical modality that simultaneously captures the location and the propagation direction of light in order to enable tridimensional imaging in a single shot. We demonstrate that it is possible to implement plenoptic imaging through second-order correlations of chaotic light, thus enabling to overcome the typical limitations of classical plenoptic devices.

The calibration of a quantum channel, i.e. the determination of the transmission losses affecting it, is definitely one of the principal objectives in both the quantum communication and quantum metrology frameworks. Another task of the utmost relevance is the identification, e.g. by extracting its photon number distribution, of the noise potentially present in the channel. Here we present a protocol, based on the response of a photon-number-resolving detector at different quantum efficiencies, able to accomplish both of these tasks at once, providing with a single measurement an estimate of the transmission losses as well as the photon statistics of the noise present in the exploited quantum channel. We show and discuss the experimental results obtained in the practical implementation of such protocol, with different kinds and levels of noise.

Weak values arise in quantum theory when the result of a weak measurement is conditioned on a subsequent strong measurement. The majority of the trials are discarded, leaving only very few successful events. Intriguingly those can display a substantial signal amplification. This raises the question of whether weak values carry potential to improve the performance of quantum sensors, and indeed a number of impressive experimental results suggested this may be the case. By contrast, recent theoretical studies have found the opposite: using weak-values to obtain an amplification generally worsens metrological performance. This survey summarises the implications of those studies, which call for a reappraisal of weak values’ utility and for further work to reconcile theory and experiment.

We address the performance of an interferometric setup in which a squeezed single photon interferes at a beam splitter with a coherent state. Our analysis in based on both the quantum Fisher information and the sensitivity when a Mach-Zehnder setup is considered and the difference photocurrent is detected at the output. We compare our results with those obtained feeding the interferometer with a squeezed vacuum (with the same squeezing parameter of the squeezed single photon) and a coherent state in order to have the same total number of photons circulating in the interferometer. We find that for fixed squeezing parameter and total number of photons there is a threshold of the coherent amplitude interfering with the squeezed single photon above which the squeezed single photons outperform the performance of squeezed vacuum (showing the highest quantum Fisher information). When the difference photocurrent measurement is considered, we can always find a threshold of the squeezing parameter (given the total number of photons and the coherent amplitude) above which squeezed single photons can be exploited to reach a better sensitivity with respect to the use of squeezed vacuum states also in the presence of non unit quantum efficiency.

By comparing measurement-induced classical Fisher information of parameterized quantum states with quantum Fisher information,we study the notion of Fisher concord (as abbreviation of the concord between the classical and the quantum Fisher information), which is an information-theoretic measure of quantum states and quantum measurements based on both classical and quantum Fisher information. Fisher concord is defined by multiplying the inverse square root of quantum Fisher information matrix to measurement-induced classical Fisher information matrix on both sides, and quantifies the relative accessibility of parameter information from quantum measurements (alternatively, the efficiency of quantum measurements in extracting parameter information). It reduces to the ratio of the classical Fisher information to quantum Fisher information in any single parameter scenario. In general, Fisher concord is a symmetric matrix which depends on both quantum states and quantum measurements. Some basic properties of Fisher concord are elucidated. The significance of Fisher concord in quantifying the interplay between classicality and quantumness in parameter estimation and in characterizing the ef- ficiency of quantum measurements are illustrated through several examples, and some information conservation relations in terms of Fisher concord are exhibited.

We consider quantum channel-estimation for depolarizing channels and phase-flip channels extended by ancilla qubits and fed with a GHZ orWstate. After application of the channel one or several qubits can be lost, and we calculate the impact of the loss on the quantum Fisher information that determines the smallest uncertainty with which the parameters of these channels can be estimated.