Practical Quantum Communication Research Articles

Genuine time-bin-encoded quantum key distribution over a turbulent depolarizing free-space channel.

Despite its widespread use in fiber optics, encoding quantum information in photonic time-bin states is usually considered impractical for free-space quantum communication as turbulence-induced spatial distortion impedes the analysis of time-bin states at the receiver. Here, we demonstrate quantum key distribution using time-bin photonic states distorted by turbulence and depolarization during free-space transmission. Utilizing a novel analyzer apparatus, we observe stable quantum bit error ratios of 5.32 %, suitable for generating secure keys, despite significant wavefront distortions and polarization fluctuations across a 1.2 km channel. This shows the viability of time-bin quantum communication over long-distance free-space channels, which will simplify direct fiber/free-space interfaces and enable new approaches for practical free-space quantum communication over multi-mode, turbulent, or depolarizing channels.

Performance analysis of continuous-variable measurementdevice-independent quantum key distribution under diverse weather conditions**Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61505261).

The effects of weather conditions are ubiquitous in practical wireless quantum communication links. Here in this work, the performances of atmospheric continuous-variable measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (CV-MDI-QKD) under diverse weather conditions are analyzed quantitatively. According to the Mie scattering theory and atmospheric CV-MDI-QKD model, we numerically simulate the relationship between performance of CV-MDI-QKD and the rainy and foggy conditions, aiming to get close to the actual combat environment in the future. The results show that both rain and fog will degrade the performance of the CV-MDI-QKD protocol. Under the rainy condition, the larger the raindrop diameter, the more obvious the extinction effect is and the lower the secret key rate accordingly. In addition, we find that the secret key rate decreases with the increase of spot deflection distance and the fluctuation of deflection. Under the foggy condition, the results illustrate that the transmittance decreases with the increase of droplet radius or deflection distance, which eventually yields the decrease in the secret key rate. Besides, in both weather conditions, the increase of transmission distance also leads the secret key rate to deteriorate. Our work can provide a foundation for evaluating the performance evaluation and successfully implementing the atmospheric CV-MDI-QKD in the future field operation environment under different weather conditions.

Overcoming Noise in Entanglement Distribution

Noise can be considered the natural enemy of quantum information. An often implied benefit of high-dimensional entanglement is its increased resilience to noise. However, manifesting this potential in an experimentally meaningful fashion is challenging and has never been done before. In infinite dimensional spaces, discretisation is inevitable and renders the effective dimension of quantum states a tunable parameter. Owing to advances in experimental techniques and theoretical tools, we demonstrate an increased resistance to noise by identifying two pathways to exploit high-dimensional entangled states. Our study is based on two separate experiments utilising canonical spatio-temporal properties of entangled photon pairs. Following these different pathways to noise resilience, we are able to certify entanglement in the photonic orbital-angular-momentum and energy-time degrees of freedom up to noise conditions corresponding to a noise fraction of 72 % and 92 % respectively. Our work paves the way towards practical quantum communication systems that are able to surpass current noise and distance limitations, while not compromising on potential device-independence.

Long-Distance Entanglement between a Multiplexed Quantum Memory and a Telecom Photon

An experimental realization of long-distance quantum entanglement between an atomic memory and a telecom photon provides a key step toward practical quantum communication.

The performance of reference-frame-independent measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution

Reference-frame-independent measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (RFI–MDI–QKD) is a promising approach for practical quantum communication. The detector side channel attacks could be removed without aligning the reference frames. By considering the statistical fluctuations, background counting rate and the polarization misalignment fluctuation, the performance of the RFI–MDI–QKD is analyzed under the condition of one, two and infinite decoy states. Moreover, the numerical simulation results are presented which offer significant reference for practical applications of RFI–MDI–QKD.

Experimental demonstration of two-color Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen entanglement in a hot vapor cell

Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen (EPR) entanglement, involving pairs of particles that are entangled in position and momenta, is of special importance for quantum information processing. Practical quantum communication requires a two-color entanglement source: visible-band photons used to excite atoms and the communication band used for signal transmission. In this article, we report on the first experimental demonstration of two-color EPR entanglement based on spontaneous Raman scattering thermal Rb atoms using quantum ghost interference and ghost imaging. This work adopts a fundamental experiment that assists in promoting practical quantum communications and in providing a means to perform quantum imaging.

Quantum error rejection for faithful quantum communication over noise channels

Quantum state transmission is a prerequisite for various quantum communication networks. The channel noise inevitably introduces distortion of quantum states passing through either a free-space channel or a fibre channel, which leads to errors or decreases the security of a practical quantum communication network. Quantum error rejection is a useful technology to faithfully transmit quantum states over large-scale quantum channels. It provides the communication parties with an uncorrupted quantum state by rejecting error states. Usually, additional photons or degrees of freedom are required to overcome the adverse effects of channel noise. As quantum error rejection method consumes less quantum resource than other anti-noise methods, it is more convenient to perform error-rejection quantum state transmission with current technology. In this review, several typical quantum error-rejection schemes for single-photon state transmission are introduced in brief and some error-rejection schemes for entanglement distribution are also briefly presented.

On-Demand Generation of Single Silicon Vacancy Defects in Silicon Carbide

Defects in silicon carbide have been explored as promising spin systems in quantum technologies. However, for practical quantum metrology and quantum communication, it is critical to achieve on-dem...

Quantum state transfer through a spin chain in two non-Markovian baths

Transfer of quantum states through spin chain system has been discussed a lot. However, the interaction of the system with a noisy environment needs to be considered for practical quantum information processing tasks. Here, we study a model where the two ends of the spin chain are independently immersed in two bosonic baths. Using the quantum state diffusion (QSD) equation approach, we obtain the master equation of the system. Assuming a noise-independent O operator associated with the QSD equation, we numerically calculate the fidelity evolution for two models of system–bath interactions: dephasing model and dissipation model. For these two models, our calculation shows that the existence of the baths always lowers the fidelity, but the non-Markovianity from the baths can be useful for enhancing the state transfer fidelity. Our investigation takes one step toward practical quantum communication through a spin system.

Long-lived non-classical correlations towards quantum communication at room temperature

Heralded single-photon sources with on-demand readout are a key enabling technology for distributed photonic networks. Such sources have been demonstrated in both cryogenic solid-state and cold-atoms systems. Practical long-distance quantum communication may benefit from using technologically simple systems such as room-temperature atomic vapours. However, atomic motion has so far limited the single-excitation lifetime in such systems to the microsecond range. Here we demonstrate efficient heralding and readout of single collective excitations created in warm caesium vapour. Using the principle of motional averaging we achieve a collective excitation lifetime of 0.27 ± 0.04 ms, two orders of magnitude larger than previously achieved for single excitations in room-temperature sources. We experimentally verify non-classicality of the light-matter correlations by observing a violation of the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality with R = 1.4 ± 0.1 > 1. Through spectral and temporal analysis we investigate the readout noise that limits single-photon operation of the source.

Decentralized base-graph routing for the quantum internet

Quantum repeater networks are a fundamental of any future quantum Internet and long-distance quantum communications. The entangled quantum nodes can communicate through several different levels of entanglement, leading to a heterogeneous, multi-level network structure. The level of entanglement between the quantum nodes determines the hop distance and the probability of the existence of an entangled link in the network. Here, we define a decentralized routing for entangled quantum networks. The proposed method allows an efficient routing to find the shortest paths in entangled quantum networks by using only local knowledge of the quantum nodes. We give bounds on the maximum value of the total number of entangled links of a path. The proposed scheme can be directly applied in practical quantum communications and quantum networking scenarios.

Theory of atmospheric quantum channels based on the law of total probability

The atmospheric turbulence is the main factor that influences quantum properties of propagating optical signals and may sufficiently degrade the performance of quantum communication protocols. The probability distribution of transmittance (PDT) for free-space channels is the main characteristics of the atmospheric links. Applying the law of total probability, we derive the PDT by separating the contributions from turbulence-induced beam wandering and beam-spot distortions. As a result, the obtained PDT varies from log-negative Weibull to truncated log-normal distributions depending on the channel characteristics. Moreover, we show that the method allows one to consistently describe beam tracking, a procedure which is typically used in practical long-distance free-space quantum communication. We analyze the security of decoy-state quantum key exchange through the turbulent atmosphere and show that beam tracking does not always improves quantum communication.

Protecting nonlocality of multipartite states by feed-forward control

Nonlocality is a useful resource in quantum communication and quantum information processing. In practical quantum communication, multipartite entangled states must be distributed between different users in different places through a channel. However, the channel is usually inevitably disturbed by the environment in quantum state distribution processing and then the nonlocality of states will be weakened and even lost. In this paper, we use a feed-forward control scheme to protect the nonlocality of the Bell and GHZ states against dissipation. We find that this protection scheme is very effective, specifically, for the Bell state, we can increase the noise threshold from 0.5 to 0.98, and for GHZ state from 0.29 to 0.96. And we also find that entanglement is relatively easier to be protected than nonlocality. For our scheme, protecting entanglement is equivalent to protecting the state in the case of Bell state, while protecting nonlocality is not.

Room temperature solid-state quantum emitters in the telecom range.

On-demand, single-photon emitters (SPEs) play a key role across a broad range of quantum technologies. In quantum networks and quantum key distribution protocols, where photons are used as flying qubits, telecom wavelength operation is preferred because of the reduced fiber loss. However, despite the tremendous efforts to develop various triggered SPE platforms, a robust source of triggered SPEs operating at room temperature and the telecom wavelength is still missing. We report a triggered, optically stable, room temperature solid-state SPE operating at telecom wavelengths. The emitters exhibit high photon purity (~5% multiphoton events) and a record-high brightness of ~1.5 MHz. The emission is attributed to localized defects in a gallium nitride (GaN) crystal. The high-performance SPEs embedded in a technologically mature semiconductor are promising for on-chip quantum simulators and practical quantum communication technologies.

Experimental characterization of pairwise correlations from triple quantum correlated beams generated by cascaded four-wave mixing processes

We theoretically and experimentally characterize the performance of the pairwise correlations from triple quantum correlated beams based on the cascaded four-wave mixing (FWM) processes. The pairwise correlations between any two of the beams are theoretically calculated and experimentally measured. The experimental and theoretical results are in good agreement. We find that two of the three pairwise correlations can be in the quantum regime. The other pairwise correlation is always in the classical regime. In addition, we also measure the triple-beam correlation which is always in the quantum regime. Such unbalanced and controllable pairwise correlation structures may be taken as advantages in practical quantum communications, for example, hierarchical quantum secret sharing. Our results also open the way for the classification and application of quantum states generated from the cascaded FWM processes.

Efficient Entanglement Concentration of Nonlocal Two-Photon Polarization-Time-Bin Hyperentangled States

We present two different hyperentanglement concentration protocols (hyper-ECPs) for two-photon systems in nonlocal polarization-time-bin hyperentangled states with known parameters, including Bell-like and cluster-like states, resorting to the parameter splitting method. They require only one of two parties in quantum communication to operate her photon in the process of entanglement concentration, not two, and they have the maximal success probability. They work with linear optical elements and have good feasibility in experiment, especially in the case that there are a big number of quantum data exchanged as the parties can obtain the information about the parameters of the nonlocal hyperentangled states by sampling a subset of nonlocal hyperentangled two-photon systems and measuring them. As the quantum state of photons in the time-bin degree of freedom suffers from less noise in an optical-fiber channel, these hyper-ECPs may have good applications in practical long-distance quantum communication in the future.

Single-qubit quantum memory exceeding ten-minute coherence time

A long-time quantum memory capable of storing and measuring quantum information at the single-qubit level is an essential ingredient for practical quantum computation and communication 1,2 . Currently, the coherence time of a single qubit is limited to less than 1 min, as demonstrated in trapped ion systems 3–5 , although much longer coherence times have been reported in ensembles of trapped ions 6,7 and nuclear spins of ionized donors 8,9 . Here, we report the observation of a coherence time of over 10 min for a single qubit in a 171Yb+ ion sympathetically cooled by a 138Ba+ ion in the same Paul trap, which eliminates the problem of qubit-detection inefficiency from heating of the qubit ion 10,11 . We also apply a few thousand dynamical decoupling pulses to suppress ambient noise from magnetic-field fluctuations and phase noise from the local oscillator 8,9,12–16 . The long-time quantum memory of the single trapped ion qubit would be the essential component of scalable quantum computers 1,17,18 , quantum networks 2,19,20 and quantum money 21,22 . The longest coherence time of a single qubit of more than ten minutes is observed in a 171Yb+ ion. After sympathetically cooling the 171Yb+ ion qubit with a 138Ba+ ion, noise from magnetic-field fluctuations and the local oscillator is suppressed by a dynamic decoupling scheme.

Self-error-rejecting photonic qubit transmission in polarization-spatial modes with linear optical elements

We present an original self-error-rejecting photonic qubit transmission scheme for both the polarization and spatial states of photon systems transmitted over collective noise channels. In our scheme, we use simple linear-optical elements, including half-wave plates, 50:50 beam splitters, and polarization beam splitters, to convert spatial-polarization modes into different time bins. By using postselection in different time bins, the success probability of obtaining the uncorrupted states approaches 1/4 for single-photon transmission, which is not influenced by the coefficients of noisy channels. Our self-error-rejecting transmission scheme can be generalized to hyperentangled N-photon systems and is useful in practical high-capacity quantum communications with photon systems in two degrees of freedom.

Canonical distillation of entanglement

Distilling highly entangled quantum states from weaker ones is a process that is crucial for efficient and long-distance quantum communication, and has implications for several other quantum information protocols. We introduce the notion of distillation under limited resources, and specifically focus on the energy constraint. The corresponding protocol, which we call the canonical distillation of entanglement, naturally leads to the set of canonically distillable states. We show that for non-interacting Hamiltonians, almost no states are canonically distillable, while the situation can be drastically different for interacting ones. Several paradigmatic Hamiltonians are considered for bipartite as well as multipartite canonical distillability. The results have potential applications for practical quantum communication devices.

Random bit generation using coherent state and threshold detectors at 1550 nanometers.

We theoretically propose and experimentally validate a practical random bit generation method based on the detections of a coherent state in the few-photon regime by a gated single-photon threshold detector, operating at the telecom wavelength of 1550 nanometers. By fine tuning the mean number of photons per pulse of a laser beam directed to the single-photon detector, a 50-50 chance of detection or no-detection is reached; under this condition, detections inside the gate window are treated as "1"s, while "0"s are associated with the absence of detections. The same method could also be applied in a free-running single-photon detector for increased throughput by chopping the light signal instead of gating the detector. Both hardware implementations yielded bit strings, which were evaluated by a standard randomness test suite with good confidence. Despite the yet low rates achieved by the proposed method, its hardware compatibility with quantum key distribution setups makes it an interesting candidate for random number generation within the context of practical quantum communications.