Quantum Communication Schemes Research Articles

High-dimensional Encoding in the Round-Robin Differential-Phase-Shift Protocol

In quantum key distribution (QKD), protocols are tailored to adopt desirable experimental attributes, including high key rates, operation in high noise levels, and practical security considerations. The round-robin differential phase shift protocol (RRDPS), falling in the family of differential phase shift protocols, was introduced to remove restrictions on the security analysis, such as the requirement to monitor signal disturbances, improving its practicality in implementations. While the RRDPS protocol requires the encoding of single photons in high-dimensional quantum states, at most, only one bit of secret key is distributed per sifted photon. However, another family of protocols, namely high-dimensional (HD) QKD, enlarges the encoding alphabet, allowing single photons to carry more than one bit of secret key each. The high-dimensional BB84 protocol exemplifies the potential benefits of such an encoding scheme, such as larger key rates and higher noise tolerance. Here, we devise an approach to extend the RRDPS QKD to an arbitrarily large encoding alphabet and explore the security consequences. We demonstrate our new framework with a proof-of-concept experiment and show that it can adapt to various experimental conditions by optimizing the protocol parameters. Our approach offers insight into bridging the gap between seemingly incompatible quantum communication schemes by leveraging the unique approaches to information encoding of both HD and DPS QKD.

Hierarchical Controlled Hybrid Quantum Communication Based on Six-Qubit Entangled States in IoT.

The rapid development and extensive application of the Internet of Things (IoT) have brought new challenges and opportunities to the field of communication. By integrating quantum secure communication with the IoT, we can provide a higher level of security and privacy protection to counteract security threats in the IoT. In this paper, a hybrid quantum communication scheme using six-qubit entangled states as a channel is proposed for specific IoT application scenarios. This scheme achieves hierarchical control of communication protocols on a single quantum channel. In the proposed scheme, device A transmits data to device B through quantum teleportation, while device B issues control commands to device A through remote quantum state preparation technology. These two tasks are controlled by control nodes C and D, respectively. The transmission of information from device A to device B is a relatively less important task, which can be solely controlled by control node C. On the other hand, issuing control commands from device B to device A is a more crucial task requiring joint control from control nodes C and D. This paper describes the proposed scheme and conducts simulation experiments using IBM's Qiskit Aer quantum computing simulator. The results demonstrate that the fidelity of the quantum teleportation protocol (QTP) and the remote state preparation protocol (RSP) reach an impressive value of 0.999, fully validating the scheme's feasibility. Furthermore, the factors affecting the fidelity of the hybrid communication protocol in an IoT environment with specific quantum noise are analyzed. By combining the security of quantum communication with the application scenarios of the IoT, this paper presents a new possibility for IoT communication.

Optimizing Graph Codes for Measurement-Based Loss Tolerance

Graph codes play an important role in photonic quantum technologies as they provide significant protection against qubit loss, a dominant noise mechanism. Here, we develop methods to analyze and optimize measurement-based tolerance to qubit loss and computational errors for arbitrary graph codes. Using these tools we identify optimized codes with up to 12 qubits and asymptotically large modular constructions. The developed methods enable significant benefits for various photonic quantum technologies, as we illustrate with novel all-photonic quantum repeater states for quantum communication and high-threshold fusion-based schemes for fault-tolerant quantum computing.9 MoreReceived 15 December 2022Accepted 13 April 2023DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PRXQuantum.4.020328Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.Published by the American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasMeasurement-based quantum computingOptical quantum information processingQuantum error correctionQuantum information with atoms & lightQuantum interconnectsQuantum repeatersQuantum Information

Impacts of low-order aberrations on capacity of orbital-angular-momentum quantum states

We use Hypergeometric Gaussian-II (HyGG-II) modes to investigate the impacts of non-Kolmogorov atmospheric turbulence on the Holevo channel capacity of a quantum communication scheme. The capacity of HyGG-II modes can be higher than that of Laguerre–Gaussian modes via modulating the hollowness parameter. The influences of low-order turbulence aberrations including tilt, defocus, astigmatism, and coma on the capacity are also explored. Generally, tilt aberration dominates among all low-order aberrations and defocus and astigmatism aberrations are always negligible. By contrast, the effect of coma aberration can be enhanced to be non-negligible when the turbulence strength or the channel zenith angle is enhanced. We also show that only the total and tilt aberrations are sensitive to the non-Kolmogorov power-law exponent. Our results may contribute to the quantum optical communication as well as aberration compensation in turbulent channels utilizing the novel family of vortex beams.

A bidirectional hybrid quantum communication scheme for a known and an unknown qubit

A bidirectional hybrid quantum communication scheme for a known and an unknown qubit

Noise resilience in path-polarization hyperentangled probe states

Most quantum systems that are used for generating entanglement and for practical applications are not isolated from the environment, and are hence susceptible to noise. Entanglement in more than one degree of freedom between two systems, known as hyperentanglement, is known to have certain advantages, including robustness against noise over conventional entangled states. Quantum illumination, imaging and communication schemes that involve sending one photon from a pair of entangled photons and retaining the other photon usually involve exposing only the signal photon to environmental noise. The disruptive nature of noise degrades entanglement and other correlations which are crucial for many of these applications. In this paper, we study the advantages of using photon pairs in certain path-polarization hyperentangled states in a noisy interaction where photons in only one of the paths are affected by noise. We model such noise and study the effect of noise on the correlations present in the hyperentangled photons. Three different methods, entanglement negativity, entanglement witnesses and Bell nonlocality are used to show the resilience of path-polarization hyperentangled probe state against noise.

Complete analysis of the maximally hyperentangled state via the weak cross-Kerr nonlinearity

We present a simple method for the complete analysis of the maximally hyperentangled state in polarization and spatial-mode degrees of freedom assisted by the weak cross-Kerr nonlinearity. Our method can not only be used for two-photon hyperentangled Bell state analysis and three-photon hyperentangled Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger (GHZ) state analysis, but is also suitable for N -photon hyperentangled GHZ state analysis. In our protocols, the bit information of hyperentanglement is read out via the nonlinear interaction, and the phase information is obtained by using linear optical element and single photon detector. This approach is achievable with the current technology, and it will be useful for practical high-capacity quantum communication schemes.

Deterministic secure quantum communication against collective noise

Collective noise is one of the main obstacles that reduce the efficiency of quantum communication. In this paper, we present two robust deterministic secure quantum communication (DSQC) schemes based on logical qubits. The first scheme employs a store-and-measure strategy along with the exclusive OR operation. Then we propose a second scheme without storage by exploiting hidden permutations and one-way hash functions. To achieve the performance of robustness against collective noise, both schemes take advantage of the compensability of decoherent-free subspace (DFS) for noise. Moreover, except for decoy qubits, all quantum states are used to convey the secret message. In addition, we provide a rigorous security analysis of potential attacks and prove the security of our protocols.

Iterated nth order nonlinear quantum dynamics with mixed initial states

Nonlinear quantum transformations play an important role in quantum state distillation, aiding quantum communication schemes. The simplest of these involve quadratic rational maps for qubits, higher order versions have not been explored in detail. We consider such iterated nonlinear protocols for qubits, involving a generalized CNOT, a measurement, and a single-qubit Hadamard gate processing n inputs in identical quantum states. To characterize the global properties of these protocols, we determine the fixed points and relevant fixed cycles. We show that a repelling mixed fixed point exists for all orders, marking a phase transition related to the disappearance of the fractalness of borders of different basins of attraction.

Two-way ↔ quantum communication using four-qubit cluster state: Mutual exchange of quantum information

In this study, we have proposed a scheme for two-way quantum communication in which the two legitimate participants mutually exchange their quantum information to each other by using a four-qubit cluster state as the quantum channel. Recently, by utilizing four-qubit cluster state as the quantum channel, Kazemikhah et al. [Int. J. Theor. Phys. 60, 378 (2021)] tried to design a scheme for mutual exchange of quantum information between two legitimate participants. However, in this study, it has been shown that in their scheme, the transmission of quantum information cannot be realized because the two participants are not entangled to each other due to a trivial conceptual mistake made by Kazemikhah et al. in the description of the quantum channel. Here, we have shown that two legitimate participants can teleport quantum information states to each other by using four-qubit cluster state as the quantum channel, provided they co-operate with each other and perform nonlocal controlled phase gate operation. If both participants do not co-operate with each other, then no one can reconstruct the information sent to them, and therefore, the exchange of information is possible only when both participants are honest to each other.

Enhancing robustness of noisy qutrit teleportation with Markovian memory

Quantum teleportation is the fundamental communication unit in quantum communication. Here, a three-level system is selected for storing and transmitting quantum information, due to its unique advantages, such as lower cost than a higher-level system and higher capacity and security than a two-level system. It is known that the key procedure for perfect teleportation is the distribution of entanglement through quantum channel. However, amounts of noise existing in the quantum channel may interfere the entangled state, causing the degradation of quantum entanglement. In the physical implementations of quantum communication schemes, noise acting on the carriers of successive transmissions often exhibits some correlations, which is the so called quantum memory channel. In this paper, a memory channel model during the entanglement distribution phase is constructed and the uniform expression of the evolution of a two-qutrit entangled state under different kinds of correlated noise is derived. Finally, Pauli noise and amplitude damping noise as the typical noise source are considered to analyze the influence of memory effects of noise on qutrit teleportation. It is expected to show that three-level teleportation under these two types of channels can generally enhance the robustness to noise if the Markovian correlations of quantum channel are taken into consideration.

Twin-field quantum key distribution over free-space optical channels in the presence of atmospheric turbulence

Future quantum communication networks envisaged on a global scale will include various networks interlinked via optical fiber and free space channels. In recent years, quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol based on optical fiber has been extensively studied. Twin-field QKD (TF-QKD) may enable 550 km QKD using standard optical fiber without quantum repeaters. However, the performance of TF-QKD in free-space channel is still unclear. In this paper, a free-space channel model is proposed with specific turbulence characterization discussed. Here, the key rate of TF-QKD under multiple scenarios considering the variation of turbulence and different link configuration is investigated. Simulation results demonstrate that the performance of free-space TF-QKD is related to link configuration and turbulence motion which is determined by surface feature, time and height. Furthermore, TF-QKD protocol is a potential scheme for the free-space quantum communication.

Direct Quantum Communications in the Presence of Realistic Noisy Entanglement

To realize the Quantum Internet, quantum communications require pre-shared entanglement among quantum nodes. However, both the generation and the distribution of the maximally-entangled quantum states are inherently contaminated by quantum decoherence. Conventionally, the quantum decoherence is mitigated by performing the consecutive steps of quantum entanglement distillation followed by quantum teleportation. However, this conventional approach imposes a long delay. To circumvent this impediment, we propose a novel quantum communication scheme relying on realistic noisy pre-shared entanglement, which eliminates the sequential steps imposing delay in the standard approach. More precisely, our proposed scheme can be viewed as a direct quantum communication scheme capable of improving the quantum bit error ratio (QBER) of the logical qubits despite relying on realistic noisy pre-shared entanglement. Our performance analysis shows that the proposed scheme offers competitive QBER, yield, and goodput compared to the existing state-of-the-art quantum communication schemes, despite requiring fewer quantum gates.

Employing Interacting Qubits for Distributed Microgrid Control

To empower flexible and scalable operations, distributed control of multi-inverter microgrids, based on classical communication networks among distributed energy resources, has attracted considerable attention as it can guarantee synchronization and provide suitable remedies to the problem of improper power sharing. Notwithstanding this, resilience of the current schemes on classical communication makes microgrids vulnerable to cyber attacks. Inspired by recent revolutionary breakthroughs in quantum communication, in this paper, we devise a novel synchronization mechanism. We extend the synchronization framework utilized in distributed control algorithms to networks of quantum systems by generating pinning terms and coupling mechanism for the new synchronization rule via exploiting proper quantum jump operators and observables, and show that the quantum system will converge to a time-variant target state. Our devised quantum distributed controller (QDC) gives rise to a novel quantum communication scheme for distributed control of microgrids and enables microgrids to exploit the state-of-the-art quantum communication frameworks as communication infrastructure. Test results on two representative AC and DC networked microgrids validate the efficacy and universality of the quantum distributed control.

Pathways for Entanglement-Based Quantum Communication in the Face of High Noise.

Entanglement-based quantum communication offers an increased level of security in practical secret shared key distribution. One of the fundamental principles enabling this security-the fact that interfering with one photon will destroy entanglement and thus be detectable-is also the greatest obstacle. Random encounters of traveling photons, losses, and technical imperfections make noise an inevitable part of any quantum communication scheme, severely limiting distance, key rate, and environmental conditions in which quantum key distribution can be employed. Using photons entangled in their spatial degree of freedom, we show that the increased noise resistance of high-dimensional entanglement can indeed be harnessed for practical key distribution schemes. We perform quantum key distribution in eight entangled paths at various levels of environmental noise and show key rates that, even after error correction and privacy amplification, still exceed 1bit per photon pair and furthermore certify a secure key at noise levels that would prohibit comparable qubit based schemes from working.

Optical designs for realization of a set of schemes for quantum cryptography

Several quantum cryptographic schemes have been proposed and realized experimentally in the past. However, even with an advancement in quantum technology and escalated interest in the designing of direct secure quantum communication schemes there are not many experimental implementations of these cryptographic schemes. In this paper, we have provided a set of optical circuits for such quantum cryptographic schemes, which have not yet been realized experimentally by modifying some of our theoretically proposed secure communication schemes. Specifically, we have proposed optical designs for the implementation of two single photon and one entangled state based controlled quantum dialogue schemes and subsequently reduced our optical designs to yield simpler designs for realizing other secure quantum communication tasks, i.e., controlled deterministic secure quantum communication, quantum dialogue, quantum secure direct communication, quantum key agreement, and quantum key distribution. We have further proposed an optical design for an entanglement swapping based deterministic secure quantum communication and its controlled counterpart.

Continuous variable multimode quantum states via symmetric group velocity matching

Configurable and scalable continuous variable (CV) quantum networks for measurement-based quantum information protocols or multipartite quantum communication schemes can be obtained via parametric down conversion (PDC) in non-linear waveguides. In this work, we exploit symmetric group velocity matching (SGVM) to engineer the properties of the squeezed modes of the PDC. We identify type II PDC in a single waveguide as the best suited process, since multiple modes with non-negligible amount of squeezing can be obtained. We explore, for the first time, the waveguide dimensions, usually only set to ensure single-mode guiding, as an additional design parameter ensuring indistinguishability of the signal and idler fields. We investigate here potassium titanyl phosphate (KTP), which offers SGVM at telecommunications wavelengths, but our approach can be applied to any non-linear material and pump wavelength. This work paves the way toward the engineering of future large-scale quantum networks in the CV regime.

Hierarchical Quantum Network using Hybrid Entanglement

The advent of a new kind of entangled state known as hybrid entangled state, i.e., entanglement between different degrees of freedom, makes it possible to perform various quantum computational and communication tasks with lesser amount of resources. Here, we aim to exploit the advantage of these entangled states in communication over quantum networks. Unfortunately, the entanglement shared over the network deteriorates due to its unavoidable interaction with surroundings. Thus, an entanglement concentration protocol is proposed to obtain a maximally entangled hybrid Omega-type state from the corresponding non-maximally entangled states. The advantage of the proposed entanglement concentration protocol is that it is feasible to implement this protocol with linear optical components and present technology. The corresponding linear optical quantum circuit is provided for experimental realizations, while the success probability of the concentration protocol is also reported. Thereafter, we propose an application of maximally entangled hybrid state in the hierarchical quantum teleportation network by performing information splitting using Omega-type state, which is also the first hierarchical quantum communication scheme in the hybrid domain so far. The present hybrid entangled state has advantage in circumventing Pauli operations on the coherent state by polarization rotation of single qubit, which can be performed with lesser errors.

Entanglement-assisted quantum communication beating the quantum Singleton bound

Brun, Devetak, and Hsieh [Science 314, 436 (2006)] demonstrated that preshared entanglement between the sender and receiver enables quantum communication protocols that have better parameters than schemes without the assistance of entanglement. Subsequently, the same authors derived a version of the so-called quantum Singleton bound that relates the parameters of the entanglement-assisted quantum-error-correcting codes proposed by them. We present an entanglement-assisted quantum communication scheme with parameters violating this bound in certain ranges. For a fixed transmission rate, our scheme allows one to correct a larger fraction of errors.

Quantum communication scheme with freely selectable users

Quantum communication plays an important role in quantum information science due to its unconditional security. In practical implementations, the users of each communication vary with the transmitted information, and hence not all users are required to participate in each communication round. Therefore, improving the flexibility and efficiency of the actual communication process is highly demanded. Here, we propose a theoretical quantum communication scheme that realizes secret key distribution for both the two-party quantum key distribution (QKD) and multi-party quantum secret sharing (QSS) modes. The sender, Alice, can freely select one or more users to share keys among all users, and nonactive users will not participate in the process of secret key sharing. Numerical simulations show the superiority of the proposed scheme in transmission distance and secure key rate. Consequently, the proposed scheme is valuable for secure quantum communication network scenarios.