Mesoscopic one-way channels for quantum state transfer via the quantum hall effect

We show that the one-way channel formalism of quantum optics has a physical realization in electronic systems. In particular, we show that magnetic edge states form unidirectional quantum channels capable of coherently transporting electronic quantum information. Using the equivalence between one-way photonic channels and magnetic edge states, we adapt a proposal for quantum state transfer to mesoscopic systems using edge states as a quantum channel, and show that it is feasible with reasonable experimental parameters. We discuss how this protocol may be used to transfer information encoded in number, charge, or spin states of quantum dots, so it may prove useful for transferring quantum information between parts of a solid-state quantum computer

Numerical analysis of capacities for two-qubit unitary operations

We present numerical results on the capacities of two-qubit unitary operations for performing communication and creating entanglement. The capacities for communication considered are based upon the increase in Holevo information of an ensemble. Our results indicate that the capacity may be accurately estimated using ensemble sizes and ancilla dimensions of 4. In addition, the calculated values of these capacities were close to, and in some cases equal to, the similarly defined entangling capacities; this result indicates connections between these capacities.

Robustness of quantum gates in the presence of noise

We define several quantitative measures of the robustness of a quantum gate against noise. Exact analytic expressions for the robustness against depolarizing noise are obtained for all bipartite unitary quantum gates, and it is found that the controlled-NOT gate is the most robust two-qubit quantum gate, in the sense that it is the quantum gate which can tolerate the most depolarizing noise and still generate entanglement. Our results enable us to place several analytic upper bounds on the value of the threshold for quantum computation, with the best bound in the most pessimistic error model being p(th)less than or equal to0.5.

Quantum methods for clock synchronization: Beating the standard quantum limit without entanglement

We introduce methods for clock synchronization that make use of the adiabatic exchange of nondegenerate two-level quantum systems: ticking qubits. Schemes involving the exchange of N independent qubits with frequency omega give a synchronization accuracy that scales as (omega root N)(-1)-i.e., as the standard quantum limit. We introduce a protocol that makes use of N-c coherent exchanges of a single qubit at frequency omega, leading to an accuracy that scales as (omega N-c)(-1) ln N-c. This protocol beats the standard quantum limit without the use of entanglement, and we argue that this scaling is the fundamental limit for clock synchronization allowed by quantum mechanics. We analyze the performance of these protocols when used with a lossy channel.

No-switching quantum key distribution using broadband modulated coherent light

We realize an end-to-end no-switching quantum key distribution protocol using continuous-wave coherent light. We encode weak broadband Gaussian modulations onto the amplitude and phase quadratures of light beams. Our no-switching protocol achieves high secret key rate via a post-selection protocol that utilizes both quadrature information simultaneously. We establish a secret key rate of 25 Mbits/s for a lossless channel and 1 kbit/s for 90% channel loss, per 17 MHz of detected bandwidth, assuming individual Gaussian eavesdropping attacks. Since our scheme is truly broadband, it can potentially deliver orders of magnitude higher key rates by extending the encoding bandwidth with higher-end telecommunication technology.

Measurement-based teleportation along quantum spin chains

We examine the teleportation of an unknown spin-1/2 quantum state along a quantum spin chain with an even number of sites. Our protocol, using a sequence of Bell measurements, may be viewed as an iterated version of the 2-qubit protocol of C. H. Bennett et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 70, 1895 (1993)]. A decomposition of the Hilbert space of the spin chain into 4 vector spaces, called Bell subspaces, is given. It is established that any state from a Bell subspace may be used as a channel to perform unit fidelity teleportation. The space of all spin-0 many-body states, which includes the ground states of many known antiferromagnetic systems, belongs to a common Bell subspace. A channel-dependent teleportation parameter O is introduced, and a bound on the teleportation fidelity is given in terms of O.

On the distributed compression of quantum information

The problem of distributed compression for correlated quantum sources is considered. The classical version of this problem was solved by Slepian and Wolf, who showed that distributed compression could take full advantage of redundancy in the local sources created by the presence of correlations. Here it is shown that, in general, this is not the case for quantum sources, by proving a lower bound on the rate sum for irreducible sources of product states which is stronger than the one given by a naive application of Slepian-Wolf. Nonetheless, strategies taking advantage of correlation do exist for some special classes of quantum sources. For example, Devetak and Winter demonstrated the existence of such a strategy when one of the sources is classical. Optimal nontrivial strategies for a different extreme, sources of Bell states, are presented here. In addition, it is explained how distributed compression is connected to other problems in quantum information theory, including information-disturbance questions, entanglement distillation and quantum error correction.