Local Operations And Classical Communication Research Articles

Local distinguishability of Dicke states in quantum secret sharing

We comprehensively investigate the local distinguishability of orthogonal Dicke states under local operations and classical communication (LOCC) from both qualitative and quantitative aspects. Based on our work, defects in the LOCC-quantum secret sharing (QSS) scheme can be complemented, and the information leakage can be quantified. For (k1,k2,k,n)-threshold LOCC-QSS scheme, more intuitive formulas for unambiguous probability and guessing probability were established, which can be used for determining the parameter k1 and k2 directly.

General Approach to Quantum Channel Impossibility by Local Operations and Classical Communication.

We describe a general approach to proving the impossibility of implementing a quantum channel by local operations and classical communication (LOCC), even with an infinite number of rounds, and find that this can often be demonstrated by solving a set of linear equations. The method also allows one to design a LOCC protocol to implement the channel whenever such a protocol exists in any finite number of rounds. Perhaps surprisingly, the computational expense for analyzing LOCC channels is not much greater than that for LOCC measurements. We apply the method to several examples, two of which provide numerical evidence that the set of quantum channels that are not LOCC is not closed and that there exist channels that can be implemented by LOCC either in one round or in three rounds that are on the boundary of the set of all LOCC channels. Although every LOCC protocol must implement a separable quantum channel, it is a very difficult task to determine whether or not a given channel is separable. Fortunately, prior knowledge that the channel is separable is not required for application of our method.

Approximate transformations of bipartite pure-state entanglement from the majorization lattice

We study the problem of deterministic transformations of an initial pure entangled quantum state, |ψ〉, into a target pure entangled quantum state, |ϕ〉, by using local operations and classical communication (LOCC). A celebrated result of Nielsen (1999) gives the necessary and sufficient condition that makes this entanglement transformation process possible. Indeed, this process can be achieved if and only if the majorization relation ψ≺ϕ holds, where ψ and ϕ are probability vectors obtained by taking the squares of the Schmidt coefficients of the initial and target states, respectively. In general, this condition is not fulfilled. However, one can look for an approximate entanglement transformation. Vidal et al. (2000) have proposed a deterministic transformation using LOCC in order to obtain a target state |χopt〉 most approximate to |ϕ〉 in terms of maximal fidelity between them. Here, we show a strategy to deal with approximate entanglement transformations based on the properties of the majorization lattice. More precisely, we propose as approximate target state one whose Schmidt coefficients are given by the supremum between ψ and ϕ. Our proposal is inspired on the observation that fidelity does not respect the majorization relation in general. Remarkably enough, we find that for some particular interesting cases, like two-qubit pure states or the entanglement concentration protocol, both proposals are coincident.

Timelike curves can increase entanglement with LOCC.

We study the nature of entanglement in presence of Deutschian closed timelike curves (D-CTCs) and open timelike curves (OTCs) and find that existence of such physical systems in nature would allow us to increase entanglement using local operations and classical communication (LOCC). This is otherwise in direct contradiction with the fundamental definition of entanglement. We study this problem from the perspective of Bell state discrimination, and show how D-CTCs and OTCs can unambiguously distinguish between four Bell states with LOCC, that is otherwise known to be impossible.

Loss-tolerant quantum secure positioning with weak laser sources

Quantum position verification (QPV) is the art of verifying the geographical location of an untrusted party. Recently, it has been shown that the widely studied Bennett & Brassard 1984 (BB84) QPV protocol is insecure after the 3 dB loss point assuming local operations and classical communication (LOCC) adversaries. Here, we propose a time-reversed entanglement swapping QPV protocol (based on measurement-device-independent quantum cryptography) that is highly robust against quantum channel loss. First, assuming ideal qubit sources, we show that the protocol is secure against LOCC adversaries for any quantum channel loss, thereby overcoming the 3 dB loss limit. Then, we analyze the security of the protocol in a more practical setting involving weak laser sources and linear optics. In this setting, we find that the security only degrades by an additive constant and the protocol is able to verify positions up to 47 dB channel loss.

Understanding Inclusion Mechanisms and Effects in Hardened Gold Electrodeposits

Gold electroplating, now over two centuries old(1), remains a mainstay of the electronic industry, where the good electrical and mechanical properties of hard gold in particular make for excellent contacts. Electrodeposited gold is hardened by the incorporation of minute amounts of inclusions, both metallic and non-metallic, which affect the microstructure of the growing film as well as its final surface(2). As previously demonstrated(3), the main contributor to hardening is the inclusions’ effect on decreasing grain size. In addition to the metal inclusions, carbon-containing by-products of the electroplating bath, particularly AuCN and CN-complexed cobalt have been found, affecting both hardness and wear resistance(4). In our work, we aim to better understand the inclusion mechanism in cobalt-hardened gold in particular, and by extension that of other additions such as nickel, and the resulting microstructure and properties. We will electrodeposit gold with systematically varying bath compositions under several deposition conditions, while measuring the nucleation rate using Tafel plots, and characterize the resulting films in terms of microstructure, hardness and wear resistance. The effect of thermal aging on the inclusion profile will be studied by Auger electron spectroscopy. Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-program laboratory managed and operated by Sandia Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Corporation, for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-AC04-94AL85000. 1. Kohl PA. Electrodeposition of gold. In: Schlesinger M, Paunovic M, editors. Modern Electroplating, Fifth Edition. New York, NY, USA: Wiley; 2000. p. 201-25. 2. Okinaka Y. Significance of inclusions in electroplated gold films for electronics applications. Gold bulletin. 2000;33(4):117-27. 3. Lo CC, Augis JA, Pinnel MR. Hardening mechanisms of hard gold. Journal of Applied Physics. 1979;50(11):6887-91. 4. DeDonker R, Vanhumbeeck J. Cobalt in gold electrodeposits. Transactions of the Institute of Metal Finishing. 1985;63:59.

Entanglement as a resource for local state discrimination in multipartite systems

We explore the question of using an entangled state as a universal resource for implementing quantum measurements by local operations and classical communication (LOCC). We show that for most systems consisting of three or more subsystems, there is no entangled state from the same space that can enable all measurements by LOCC. This is in direct contrast to the bipartite case, where a maximally entangled state is an universal resource. Our results are obtained showing an equivalence between the problem of local state transformation and that of entanglement-assisted local unambiguous state discrimination.

Entanglement as a resource to distinguish orthogonal product states.

It is known that there are many sets of orthogonal product states which cannot be distinguished perfectly by local operations and classical communication (LOCC). However, these discussions have left the following open question: What entanglement resources are necessary and/or sufficient for this task to be possible with LOCC? In m ⊗ n, certain classes of unextendible product bases (UPB) which can be distinguished perfectly using entanglement as a resource, had been presented in 2008. In this paper, we present protocols which use entanglement more efficiently than teleportation to distinguish some classes of orthogonal product states in m ⊗ n, which are not UPB. For the open question, our results offer rather general insight into why entanglement is useful for such tasks, and present a better understanding of the relationship between entanglement and nonlocality.

Phase diagram of quantum critical system via local convertibility of ground state.

We investigate the relationship between two kinds of ground-state local convertibility and quantum phase transitions in XY model. The local operations and classical communications (LOCC) convertibility is examined by the majorization relations and the entanglement-assisted local operations and classical communications (ELOCC) via Rényi entropy interception. In the phase diagram of XY model, LOCC convertibility and ELOCC convertibility of ground-states are presented and compared. It is shown that different phases in the phase diagram of XY model can have different LOCC or ELOCC convertibility, which can be used to detect the quantum phase transition. This study will enlighten extensive studies of quantum phase transitions from the perspective of local convertibility, e.g., finite-temperature phase transitions and other quantum many-body models.

LOCC indistinguishable orthogonal product quantum states.

We construct two families of orthogonal product quantum states that cannot be exactly distinguished by local operation and classical communication (LOCC) in the quantum system of 2k+i ⊗ 2l+j (i, j ∈ {0, 1} and i ≥ j ) and 3k+i ⊗ 3l+j (i, j ∈ {0, 1, 2}). And we also give the tiling structure of these two families of quantum product states where the quantum states are unextendible in the first family but are extendible in the second family. Our construction in the quantum system of 3k+i ⊗ 3l+j is more generalized than the other construction such as Wang et al.’s construction and Zhang et al.’s construction, because it contains the quantum system of not only 2k ⊗ 2l and 2k+1 ⊗ 2l but also 2k ⊗ 2l+1 and 2k+1 ⊗ 2l+1. We calculate the non-commutativity to quantify the quantumness of a quantum ensemble for judging the local indistinguishability. We give a general method to judge the indistinguishability of orthogonal product states for our two constructions in this paper. We also extend the dimension of the quantum system of 2k ⊗ 2l in Wang et al.’s paper. Our work is a necessary complement to understand the phenomenon of quantum nonlocality without entanglement.

Devising local protocols for multipartite quantum measurements

We provide a method of designing protocols for implementing multipartite quantum measurements when the parties are restricted to local operations and classical communication (LOCC). For each finite integer number of rounds, $r$, the method succeeds in every case for which an $r$-round protocol exists for the measurement under consideration, and failure of the method has the immediate implication that the measurement under consideration cannot be implemented by LOCC no matter how many rounds of communication are allowed, including when the number of rounds is allowed to be infinite. It turns out that this method shows---often with relative ease---the impossibility by LOCC for a number of examples, including cases where this was not previously known, as well as the example that first demonstrated what has famously become known as nonlocality without entanglement.

Entanglement cost and entangling power of bipartite unitary and permutation operators

It is known that any bipartite unitary operator of Schmidt rank three is equivalent to a controlled unitary under local unitaries. We propose a standard form of such operators. Using the form we improve the upper bound for the entanglement cost to implement such operators under local operations and classical communications (LOCC), and provide a corresponding protocol. A part of our protocol is based on a recursive-control protocol which is helpful for implementing other unitary operators. We show that any bipartite permutation unitary of Schmidt rank three can be implemented using LOCC and two ebits. We give two protocols for implementing bipartite permutation unitaries of any Schmidt rank $r$, and showed that one of the protocol uses $O(r)$ ebits of entanglement and $O(r)$ bits of classical communication, while these two types of costs for the other protocol scale as $O(r\log r)$ but the actual values are smaller for all $r<1100$. Based on this we obtain upper bounds of the number of nonlocal CNOT gates needed to implement bipartite classical reversible maps using classical circuits under two different conditions. We also quantify the entangling power of bipartite permutation unitaries of Schmidt rank two and three. We show that they are respectively $1$ ebit and some value between $\log_2 9 - 16/9$ and $\log_2 3$ ebits.

On small set of one-way LOCC indistinguishability of maximally entangled states

In this paper, we study the one-way local operations and classical communication (LOCC) problem. In $\mathbb{C}^d\otimes\mathbb{C}^d$ with $d\geq4$, we construct a set of $3\lceil\sqrt{d}\rceil-1$ one-way LOCC indistinguishable maximally entangled states which are generalized Bell states. Moreover, we show that there are four maximally entangled states which cannot be perfectly distinguished by one-way LOCC measurements for any dimension $d\geq 4$.

Local indistinguishability of orthogonal product states

In the general bipartite quantum system $m \otimes n$, Wang \emph{et al.} [Y.-L Wang \emph{et al.}, Phys. Rev. A \textbf{92}, 032313 (2015)] presented $3(m+n)-9$ orthogonal product states which cannot be distinguished by local operations and classical communication (LOCC). In this paper, we aim to construct less locally indistinguishable orthogonal product states in $m\otimes n $. First, in $3\otimes n (3< n)$ quantum system, we construct $3n-2$ locally indistinguishable orthogonal product states which are not unextendible product bases. Then, for $m\otimes n (4\leq m\leq n)$, we present $3n+m-4$ orthogonal product states which cannot be perfectly distinguished by LOCC. Finally, in the general bipartite quantum system $m\otimes n(3\leq m\leq n)$, we show a smaller set with $2n-1$ orthogonal product states and prove that these states are LOCC indistinguishable using a very simple but quite effective method. All of the above results demonstrate the phenomenon of nonlocality without entanglement.

Discrimination of two-qubit unitaries via local operations and classical communication.

Distinguishability is a fundamental and operational measure generally connected to information applications. In quantum information theory, from the postulates of quantum mechanics it often has an intrinsic limitation, which then dictates and also characterises capabilities of related information tasks. In this work, we consider discrimination between bipartite two-qubit unitary transformations by local operations and classical communication (LOCC) and its relations to entangling capabilities of given unitaries. We show that a pair of entangling unitaries which do not contain local parts, if they are perfectly distinguishable by global operations, can also be perfectly distinguishable by LOCC. There also exist non-entangling unitaries, e.g. local unitaries, that are perfectly discriminated by global operations but not by LOCC. The results show that capabilities of LOCC are strictly restricted than global operations in distinguishing bipartite unitaries for a finite number of repetitions, contrast to discrimination of a pair of bipartite states and also to asymptotic discrimination of unitaries.

Quantum state representation based on combinatorial Laplacian matrix of star-relevant graph

In this paper the density matrices derived from combinatorial Laplacian matrix of graphs is considered. More specifically, the paper places emphasis on the star-relevant graph, which means adding certain edges on peripheral vertices of star graph. Initially, we provide the spectrum of the density matrices corresponding to star-like graph (i.e., adding an edge on star graph) and present that the Von Neumann entropy increases under the graph operation (adding an edge on star graph) and the graph operation cannot be simulated by local operation and classical communication (LOCC). Subsequently, we illustrate the spectrum of density matrices corresponding to star-alike graph (i.e., adding one edge on star-like graph) and exhibit that the Von Neumann entropy increases under the graph operation (adding an edge on star-like graph) and the graph operation cannot be simulated by LOCC. Finally, the spectrum of density matrices corresponding to star-mlike graph (i.e., adding m nonadjacent edges on the peripheral vertices of star graph) is demonstrated and the relation between the graph operation and Von Neumann entropy, LOCC is revealed in this paper.

Maximal entanglement concentration for a set of $$(n+1)$$ ( n + 1 ) -qubit states

We propose two schemes for concentration of $$(n+1)$$(n+1)-qubit entangled states that can be written in the form of $$\left( \alpha |\varphi _{0}\rangle |0\rangle +\beta |\varphi _{1}\rangle |1\rangle \right) _{n+1}$$?|?0?|0?+s|?1?|1?n+1 where $$|\varphi _{0}\rangle $$|?0? and $$|\varphi _{1}\rangle $$|?1? are mutually orthogonal n-qubit states. The importance of this general form is that the entangled states such as Bell, cat, GHZ, GHZ-like, $$|\varOmega \rangle $$|Ω?, $$|Q_{5}\rangle $$|Q5?, 4-qubit cluster states and specific states from the nine SLOCC-nonequivalent families of 4-qubit entangled states can be expressed in this form. The proposed entanglement concentration protocol is based on the local operations and classical communications (LOCC). It is shown that the maximum success probability for ECP using quantum nondemolition technique (QND) is $$2\beta ^{2}$$2s2 for $$(n+1)$$(n+1)-qubit states of the prescribed form. It is shown that the proposed schemes can be implemented optically. Further, it is also noted that the proposed schemes can be implemented using quantum dot and microcavity systems.

Entanglement and swap of quantum states in two qubits

Suppose that two distant parties Alice and Bob share an entangled state $\rho_{AB}$, and they want to exchange the subsystems of $\rho_{AB}$ by local operations and classical communication (LOCC). In general, this LOCC task (i.e. the LOCC transformation of $\rho_{AB} \to V\rho_{AB} V$ with $V$ being a swap operator) is impossible deterministically, but becomes possible probabilistically. In this paper, we study how the optimal probability is related to the amount of entanglement in the framework of positive partial transposed (PPT) operations, and numerically show a remarkable class of states whose probability is the smallest among every state in two quantum bits.

Entanglement and swap of quantum states in two qubits

Suppose that two distant parties Alice and Bob share an entangled state ρAB, and they want to exchange the subsystems of ρAB by local operations and classical communication (LOCC). In general, this...

Local distinguishability of maximally entangled states in canonical form

In this paper, we mainly study the local distinguishability of mutually orthogonal maximally entangled states in canonical form. In $$d \otimes d$$d?d, Nathanson (Phys Rev A 88:062316, 2013) presented a feasible necessary and sufficient condition for distinguishing the general bipartite quantum states by one-way local operations and classical communication (LOCC). However, for maximally entangled states in canonical form, it is still unknown how to more effectively judge whether there exists a state such that those unitary operators corresponding to those maximally entangled states are pairwise orthogonal. In this work, we exhibit one method which can be used to more effectively judge it. Furthermore, we construct some sets of maximally entangled states and can easily know that those states are not distinguished by one-way LOCC with the help of our new method.