Entanglement Swapping Research Articles

Demonstration and Comparison of Different Entanglement Fabrication Approaches

Quantum entanglement is the most representative feature of quantum mechanics to classical mechanics. It is the delocalization, non-classical strong correlation among multiple quantum system. It has been developed for nearly one hundred years and a lot of methods of production and applications have been proposed. Aiming at the generation mode of quantum entanglement, this study presents two general preparation methods of quantum entanglement sources, including spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) and the preparation of quantum entanglement sources based on the four-wave mixing (FWM) effect. The principle, advantages and disadvantages of quantum entanglement sources are analyzed respectively. Finally, the research and application direction of the preparation method of quantum entanglement source are prospected. With the ability of preparation of quantum entanglement source, the application of quantum entanglement developed quickly, (e.g., quantum teleportation, entanglement swapping, quantum key distribution and quantum dense coding in the area of communication), and other area such as quantum computer, quantum imaging, quantum ranging and quantum clock synchronization. These results shed light on guiding further exploration of entanglement fabrication.

Time-Resolved Hanbury Brown–Twiss Interferometry of On-Chip Biphoton Frequency Combs Using Vernier Phase Modulation

Biphoton frequency combs (BFCs) are promising quantum sources for large-scale and high-dimensional quantum information and networking systems. In this context, the spectral purity of individual frequency bins will be critical for realizing quantum networking protocols like teleportation and entanglement swapping. Measurement of the temporal autocorrelation function of the unheralded signal or idler photons comprising the BFC is a key tool for characterizing their spectral purity and in turn verifying the utility of the biphoton state for networking protocols. Yet the experimentally obtainable precision for measuring BFC correlation functions is often severely limited by detector jitter. The fine temporal features in the correlation function---not only of practical value in quantum information, but also of fundamental interest in the study of quantum optics---are lost as a result. We propose a scheme to circumvent this challenge through electro-optic phase modulation, experimentally demonstrating time-resolved Hanbury Brown--Twiss characterization of BFCs generated from an integrated 40.5-GHz ${\mathrm{Si}}_{3}{\mathrm{N}}_{4}$ microring, up to a $3\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}3$-dimensional two-qutrit Hilbert space. Through slight detuning of the electro-optic drive frequency from the comb's free spectral range, our approach leverages Vernier principles to magnify temporal features, which would otherwise be averaged out by detector jitter. We demonstrate our approach under both continuous-wave and pulsed-pumping regimes, finding excellent agreement with theory. Our method reveals not only the collective statistics of the contributing frequency bins but also their temporal shapes---features lost in standard fully integrated autocorrelation measurements.

On the Capacity Region of Bipartite and Tripartite Entanglement Switching

We study a quantum entanglement distribution switch serving a set of users in a star topology with equal-length links. The quantum switch, much like a quantum repeater, can perform entanglement swapping to extend entanglement across longer distances. Additionally, the switch is equipped with entanglement switching logic, enabling it to implement switching policies to better serve the needs of the network. In this work, the function of the switch is to create bipartite or tripartite entangled states among users at the highest possible rates at a fixed ratio. Using Markov chains, we model a set of randomized switching policies. Discovering that some are better than others, we present analytical results for the case where the switch stores one qubit per user, and find that the best policies outperform a time division multiplexing policy for sharing the switch between bipartite and tripartite state generation. This performance improvement decreases as the number of users grows. The model is easily augmented to study the capacity region in the presence of quantum state decoherence and associated cut-off times for qubit storage, obtaining similar results. Moreover, decoherence-associated quantum storage cut-off times appear to have little effect on capacity in our identical-link system. We also study a smaller class of policies when the switch stores two qubits per user.

Entanglement Swapping and Swapped Entanglement

Entanglement swapping is gaining widespread attention due to its application in entanglement distribution among different parts of quantum appliances. We investigate the entanglement swapping for pure and noisy systems, and argue different entanglement quantifiers for quantum states. We explore the relationship between the entanglement of initial states and the average entanglement of final states in terms of concurrence and negativity. We find that if initial quantum states are maximally entangled and we make measurements in the Bell basis, then average concurrence and average negativity of final states give similar results. In this case, we simply obtain the average concurrence (average negativity) of the final states by taking the product of concurrences (negativities) of the initial states. However, the measurement in non-maximally entangled basis during entanglement swapping degrades the average swapped entanglement. Further, the product of the entanglement of the initial mixed states provides an upper bound to the average swapped entanglement of final states obtained after entanglement swapping. The negativity work well for weak entangled noisy states but concurrence gives better results for relatively strong entanglement regimes. We also discuss how successfully the output state can be used as a channel for the teleportation of an unknown qubit.

Threshold effect for probabilistic entanglement swapping

The basic entanglement swapping protocol allows to project two qubits, which have never interacted, onto a maximally entangled state. For deterministic swapping, the key ingredient is the maximal entanglement that was initially contained in two pairs of qubits and the capacity of projecting onto a Bell basis. Thus the basic and deterministic entanglement swapping scheme involves three maximal level of entanglement. In this work we propose probabilistic entanglement swapping processes performed with different amounts of initial entanglement. Besides that we suggest a non Bell measuring-basis, to introduce a third entanglement level in the process. Additionally, we propose the unambiguous state extraction scheme as the local mechanism for probabilistically achieving the EPR projection. The combination of these three elements allows us to design four strategies for performing probabilistic entanglement swapping. Surprisingly, we find a twofold entanglement threshold effect related to the concurrence of the measuring-basis. Specifically, the maximal probability of accomplishing a EPR projection becomes a constant for concurrences higher than or equal to threshold entanglement value. Thus, we show that maximal entanglement in the measuring-basis is not required for attaining the EPR projection.

Multi-party quantum private comparison of size relationship with two third parties based on d-dimensional Bell states

In this paper, we put forward a multi-party quantum private comparison (MQPC) protocol with two semi-honest third parties (TPs) by adopting -dimensional Bell states, which can judge the size relationship of private integers from more than two users within one execution of protocol. Each TP is permitted to misbehave on her own but cannot collude with others. In the proposed MQPC protocol, TPs are only required to apply -dimensional single-particle measurements rather than -dimensional Bell state measurements. There are no quantum entanglement swapping and unitary operations required in the proposed MQPC protocol. The security analysis validates that the proposed MQPC protocol can resist both the outside attacks and the participant attacks. The proposed MQPC protocol is adaptive for the case that users want to compare the size relationship of their private integers under the control of two supervisors. Furthermore, the proposed MQPC protocol can be used in the strange user environment, because there are not any communication and pre-shared key between each pair of users.

Multi-hop quantum teleportation of an arbitrary two-qubit state based on hierarchical simultaneous entanglement swapping

Combined with hierarchy simultaneous entanglement swapping, the scheme of the multi-hop quantum teleportation (QT) is proposed by using multi-pair Bell states. The scheme consists of two levels based on simultaneous entanglement swapping, namely Level-1 and Level-2. The former realizes simultaneous entanglement swapping of the inner segment, while the latter completes simultaneous entanglement swapping of the inter segment. Besides, the effect of four different types of noise (phase-damping, amplitude-damping, phase-flip, and bit-flip noise) on our scheme is analyzed by calculating the fidelity and concurrence. The results indicate that the fidelity and concurrence are related to the amplitude parameter, decoherence rate and number of nodes. Furthermore, compared with the scheme of the multi-hop QT adopting simultaneous entanglement swapping, our scheme can greatly reduce classical communication cost, and shows that the optimal classical communication cost can be obtained by selecting different segmentation methods.

Multiple-participant measurement-device-independent quantum secret sharing protocol based on entanglement swapping

Quantum secret sharing (QSS) is a multi-party quantum communication mode, which allows the dealer to split a key into several parts and send each part of a key to a participant. The participants can obtain the key only by cooperation. Entanglement swapping is a promising method to construct the entanglement channel. In the paper, we propose a multiple-participant measurement-device-independent QSS protocol based on entanglement swapping. All the measurement tasks are handed over to an untrusted measurement party, so that our protocol can resist all possible attacks from imperfect measurement devices. Our protocol requires the linear-optical Bell state analysis, which is easy to operate. Our protocol has application potential in the future quantum communication field.

Any four orthogonal ququad–ququad maximally entangled states are locally markable

In quantum state discrimination, the observers are given a quantum system and aim to verify its state from the two or more possible target states. In the local quantum state marking as an extension of quantum state discrimination, there are N composite quantum systems and N possible orthogonal target quantum states. Distant Alice and Bob are asked to correctly mark the states of the given quantum systems via local operations and classical communication. Here we investigate the local state marking with N systems, N = 4, 5, 6, and 7. Therein, Alice and Bob allow for three local operations: measuring the local observable either σ z or σ x simultaneously, and entanglement swapping. It shows that, given arbitrary four systems, Alice and Bob can perform the perfect local quantum state marking. In the N = 5, 6 cases, they can perform perfect local state marking with specific target states. We conjecture the impossibility of the local quantum state marking given any seven target states since Alice and Bob cannot fulfill the task in the simplest case.

A novel multi-party semiquantum private comparison protocol of size relationship with [formula omitted]-dimensional single-particle states

By using d-level single-particle states, the first multi-party semiquantum private comparison (MSQPC) protocol which can judge the size relationship of private inputs from more than two classical users within one execution of protocol is put forward. This protocol requires the help of one quantum third party (TP) and one classical TP, both of whom are allowed to misbehave on their own but cannot conspire with anyone else. Neither quantum entanglement swapping nor unitary operations are necessary for implementing this protocol. TPs are only required to perform d-dimensional single-particle measurements. The correctness analysis validates the accuracy of the compared results. The security analysis verifies that both the outside attacks and the participant attacks can be resisted.

Quantum homomorphic broadcast multi-signature based on homomorphic aggregation

Quantum multi-signature has attracted extensive attention since it was put forward. Beside its own improvement, related research is often combined with other quantum signature. However, this type of quantum signature has one thing in common, that is, the generation and verification of signature depend heavily on the shared classical secret key. In order to increase the reliability of signature, the homomorphic aggregation technique is applied to quantum multi-signature, and then we propose a quantum homomorphic multi-signature protocol. Unlike previous quantum multi-signature protocols, this protocol utilizes homomorphic properties to complete signature generation and verification. In the signature generation phase, entanglement swapping is introduced, so that the individual signatures of multiple users are aggregated into a new multi-signature. The original quantum state is signed by the shared secret key to realize the verification of the signature in the verification phase. The signature process satisfies the homomorphic property, which can improve the reliability of the signature.

Semiquantum secret sharing by using χ-type states

In this paper, a semiquantum secret sharing (SQSS) protocol based on x-type states is proposed, which can accomplish the goal that only when two classical communicants cooperate together can they extract the shared secret key of a quantum communicant. Detailed security analysis turns out that this protocol is completely robust against an eavesdropper. This protocol has some merits: (1) it only requires one kind of quantum entangled state as the initial quantum resource; (2) it doesn't employ quantum entanglement swapping or unitary operations; and (3) it needn't share private keys among different participants beforehand.

Local predictability and coherence versus distributed entanglement in entanglement swapping from partially entangled pure states

Complete complementarity relations, as e.g. P(ρA)2+C(ρA)2+E(|Ψ〉AB)2=1, constrain the local predictability and local coherence and the entanglement of bipartite pure states. For pairs of qubits prepared initially in a particular class of partially entangled pure states with null local coherence, these relations were used in Ref. [6] (Basso and Maziero (2022)) to provide an operational connection between local predictability of the pre-measurement states with the probability of the maximally entangled components of the states after the Bell-basis measurement of the entanglement swapping protocol (ESP). In this article, we extend this result for general pure initial states. We obtain a general relation between pre-measurement local predictability and coherence and the distributed entanglement in the ESP. We use IBM's quantum computers to verify experimentally some instances of these general theoretical results.

The Bell inequalities: Commentary on the Nobel Prize in Physics 2022

<p indent="0mm">The Nobel Prize in Physics 2022 was awarded to three experiment physicists: Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger, for their contributions to “experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science”. In this paper, the history, basics, and applications related with the Bell inequalities are reviewed. The discussion of fundamental issues on quantum mechanics dated back to the year 1927 when the fifth Solvay conference was held, highlighting intense arguments between Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr. At the time, Einstein expressed, publicly for the first time, his critical attitude towards quantum mechanics. While the arguments did not reach a decisive conclusion, Bohr’s probabilistic interpretation of quantum mechanics, the Copenhagen interpretation, had since been well circulated among the community. Einstein’s arguments with Bohr lasted many years after the conference. The arguably most famous one was the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox, proposed in a 1935 paper written by the three authors. They stated, by flawless reasoning, that quantum mechanics is ‘incomplete’. Bohr replied immediately. So did Erwin Schrödinger, who, in particular, coined the term ‘entangled’ for the first time to describe the bizarre quantum mechanical property. Nevertheless, the EPR paper received few citations at its publication, until 1990’s when quantum information science started blossoming. From today’s perspective, the paper resembles the ‘sleeping beauty’ who slumbered for decades before fully awakening. It has been widely accepted that it was John S. Bell who eventually resolved the EPR paradox. But many important figures before him should not go unnoticed, including John A. Wheeler, Chien-Shiung Wu, David Bohm, to name a few. In 1964, Bell wrote down a mathematical inequality which satisfies local hidden variable theory but which can be violated in quantum mechanics. The significance is that Bell’s inequality brings the rather philosophic debates on the EPR paradox down to be experimentally testable. Hence, an experiment is here appealing, as is the case in all fields of physics. To the end, John F. Clauser, alongside Stuart J. Freedman, conducted an experiment in 1972 to test a Bell inequality, the Bell-Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) inequality, proposed by him and his collaborators in 1969. The results, however, leaves loopholes open. One of the loopholes was closed in a later experiment led by Alain Aspect in 1982. The Bell-CHSH inequality was later tested under a much stricter condition by Anton Zeilinger’s team. Two most important loopholes were both closed by three teams in 2015 independently. Zeilinger’s team was among them. Almost all experiments to date have confirmed quantum mechanical predictions. Zeilinger’s team also performed the first teleportation of unknown quantum states, the first entanglement swapping, along with other contributions pioneering the quantum information science. In retrospect, the foundational study of quantum theory has been developed over a century. It once drew much of quantum physics founders’ attention, went virtually unnoticed while other physical fields advanced, had for quite a while been considered to have very weak relationship with major physics, and finally revived in recent decades leading to rapid progress in quantum information science and quantum technology. We believe that the Nobel Prize in Physics this year is not only an award and recognition to past achievements, but also heralds a new era of science in future.

Single-state semiquantum private comparison based on Bell states

In this paper, a novel semiquantum private comparison (SQPC) protocol based on single kind of Bell states is proposed, which allows two classical parties to judge the equality of their private inputs securely and correctly under the help of a semi-honest third party (TP) who possesses complete quantum capabilities. TP is allowed to misbehave on her own but cannot conspire with anyone else. Our protocol needs none of unitary operations, quantum entanglement swapping or the reordering operations. Moreover, our protocol only needs to prepare single kind of Bell states as initial quantum resource. Detailed security analysis turns out that our protocol is secure against various outside and participant attacks. Compared with most of the existing SQPC protocols based on Bell states, our protocol is more feasible in practice.

Nonlocal subpicosecond delay metrology using spectral quantum interference

Precise knowledge of position and timing information is critical to support elementary protocols such as entanglement swapping on quantum networks. While approaches have been devised to use quantum light for such metrology, they largely rely on time-of-flight (ToF) measurements with single-photon detectors and, therefore, are limited to picosecond-scale resolution owing to detector jitter. In this work, we demonstrate an approach to distributed sensing that leverages phase modulation to map changes in the spectral phase to coincidence probability, thereby overcoming the limits imposed by single-photon detection. By extracting information about the joint biphoton phase, we measure a generalized delay—the difference in signal–idler arrival, relative to local radio frequency (RF) phase modulation. For nonlocal ranging measurements, we achieve (2σ) precision of±0.04psand for measurements of the relative RF phase, (2σ) precision of±0.7∘. We complement this fine timing information with ToF data from single-photon time-tagging to demonstrate absolute measurement of time delay. By relying on off-the-shelf telecommunications equipment and standard quantum resources, this approach has the potential to reduce overhead in practical quantum networks.

Metasurface for complete measurement of polarization Bell state

AbstractBell state measurement is vital to quantum information technology. Conventional linear optical elements, however, cannot fully distinguish all polarization Bell states without assisting of additional degrees of freedom. Leveraging on a pair of binary-pixel metasurfaces, we demonstrate direct measurement of all four polarization Bell states. Each metasurface is designed to produce two output modes that linearly superpose three Bell states in the coincidence counting measurement. By rotating the polarizers, the coincidence counting measurement achieves a tunable anticorrelation between one and the other two Bell states, achieving Bell state detection efficiency of 75% in a single measurement. Complete and deterministic Bell state measurement is further realized by performing two measurements. Our work shows the advantage of utilization of metasurfaces in quantum detection schemes and is of great applicative interest for quantum dense coding, entanglement swapping, quantum teleportation protocols, and novel quantum information processing tasks.

Microwave and Optical Entanglement for Quantum Transduction with Electro-Optomechanics

Quantum transduction refers to the coherent conversion between microwave and optical states, which can be achieved by quantum teleportation if given high-fidelity microwave-optical entanglement, namely entanglement-based quantum transduction. Reliable microwave-optical entanglement can be generated using various platforms. In this paper we base the discussion on a piezo-optomechanical system and make the teleportation induced conversion scheme more concrete in the framework of quantum channel theory. By comparing the quantum capacity between the entanglement-based conversion channel and the traditional direct quantum transduction channel, we show that the entanglement-based scheme indeed admits a positive transduction rate when the direct quantum transduction has zero quantum capacity. Given two piezo-optomechanical systems, we also investigate the generation of microwave-microwave entanglement from entanglement swapping within continuous-variable and discrete-variable settings, showing the potentials of directly connecting microwave quantum processors by microwave-microwave quantum teleportation.

Limits of network nonlocality probed by timelike-separated observers

In an entanglement swapping scenario, if two sources sharing entangled states between three parties are independent, local correlations lead to a different kind of inequalities than the standard Bell inequalities, known as network local models. A highly demanding task is to find out a way to involve many players nontrivially in a quantum network since measurements, in general, disturb the system. To this end, we consider here a novel way of sharing network nonlocality when two observers initially share close to a maximally entangled states. We report that by employing unsharp measurements performed by one of the observers, six pairs can sequentially demonstrate the violation of bilocal correlations while a maximum of two pairs of observers can exhibit bi-nonlocality when both the observers perform unsharp measurements. We also find the critical noise involved in unsharp measurements in each round to illustrate the bi-nonlocality for a fixed shared entangled state as a resource. We also establish a connection between entanglement content of the shared state, quantified via von-Neumann entropy of the local density matrix for pure states and entanglement of formation for Werner states, and the maximum number of rounds showing violation of bilocal correlations. By reducing entanglement content in the elements of the joint measurement by the third party, we observe that the maximum number reduces to two sequential sharing of bi-nonlocality even for the maximally entangled state when the settings at each side are taken to be three and fixed.

Quantum key secure communication protocol via enhanced superdense coding

In this study, an improvement, and a generalization to more than two bits of the superdense coding protocol are presented. Based on both innovations, a novel quantum key secure communication protocol is developed, which uses an N-bit key, optical multiplexers and demultiplexers, and quantum repeaters, which work thanks to entanglement swapping. In this way, the new protocol allows the simultaneous transmission of N-bits encrypted through optical channels. This study incorporates implementations on two platforms: the Quirk simulator, and the 16-qubits Melbourne processor of the IBM Q Experience program. Errors in terms of the number of quantum repeaters are studied. Finally, this study is completed by analyzing the advantages of the optical link, with which the protocol works, versus the commonly used electromagnetic link for quantum communication between submerged submarines in the presence of a third party that acts as an eavesdropper.