2N qubit “mirror states” for optimal quantum communication

Abstract

We introduce a new genuinely 2N qubit state, known as the “mirror state” with interesting entanglement properties. The well known Bell and the cluster states form a special case of these “mirror states”, for N = 1 and N = 2 respectively. It can be experimentally realized using SWAP and multiply controlled phase shift operations. After establishing the general conditions for a state to be useful for various communicational protocols involving quantum and classical information, it is shown that the present state can optimally implement algorithms for the quantum teleportation of an arbitrary N qubit state and achieve quantum information splitting in all possible ways. With regard to superdense coding, one can send 2N classical bits by sending only N qubits and consuming N ebits of entanglement. Explicit comparison of the mirror state with the rearranged N Bell pairs and the linear cluster states is considered for these quantum protocols. We also show that mirror states are more robust than the rearranged Bell pairs with respect to a certain class of collisional decoherence.