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arXiv:1002.0232 · Physical Review A

Discrimination of binary coherent states using a homodyne detector and a photon number resolving detector

Christoffer Wittmann, Ulrik L. Andersen, Masahiro Takeoka, Сыч Денис Васильевич, Gerd Leuchs

Published Jun 25, 2010• 77 citations
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Abstract

We investigate quantum measurement strategies capable of discriminating two coherent states probabilistically with significantly smaller error probabilities than can be obtained using nonprobabilistic state discrimination. We apply a postselection strategy to the measurement data of a homodyne detector as well as a photon number resolving detector in order to lower the error probability. We compare the two different receivers with an optimal intermediate measurement scheme where the error rate is minimized for a fixed rate of inconclusive results. The photon number resolving (PNR) receiver is experimentally demonstrated and compared to an experimental realization of a homodyne receiver with postselection. In the comparison, it becomes clear that the performance of the PNR receiver surpasses the performance of the homodyne receiver, which we prove to be optimal within any Gaussian operations and conditional dynamics.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.81.062338

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We investigate quantum measurement strategies capable of discriminating two coherent states probabilistically with significantly smaller error probabilities than can be obtained using nonprobabilistic state discrimination. We apply a postselection strategy to the measurement data of a homodyne detector as well as a photon number resolving detector in order to lower the error probability. We compare the two different receivers with an optimal intermediate measurement scheme where the error rate is minimized for a fixed rate of inconclusive results. The photon number resolving (PNR) receiver is experimentally demonstrated and compared to an experimental realization of a homodyne receiver with postselection. In the comparison, it becomes clear that the performance of the PNR receiver surpasses the performance of the homodyne receiver, which we prove to be optimal within any Gaussian operations and conditional dynamics.
The discrimination of non-orthogonal quantum states with reduced or without errors is a fundamental task in quantum measurement theory. In this work, we investigate a quantum measurement strategy capable of discriminating two coherent states probabilistically with significantly smaller error probabilities than can be obtained using non-probabilistic state discrimination. We find that appropriate postselection of the measurement data of a photon number resolving detector can be used to discriminate two coherent states with small error probability. We compare our new receiver to an optimal intermediate measurement between minimum error discrimination and unambiguous state discrimination.
The discrimination of non-orthogonal quantum states with reduced or without errors is a fundamental task in quantum measurement theory. In this work, we investigate a quantum measurement strategy capable of discriminating two coherent states probabilistically with significantly smaller error probabilities than can be obtained using non-probabilistic state discrimination. We find that appropriate postselection of the measurement data of a photon number resolving detector can be used to discriminate two coherent states with small error probability. We compare our new receiver to an optimal intermediate measurement between minimum error discrimination and unambiguous state discrimination.
We experimentally demonstrate a new measurement scheme for the discrimination of two coherent states. The measurement scheme is based on a displacement operation followed by a photon-number-resolving detector, and we show that it outperforms the standard homodyne detector which we, in addition, prove to be optimal within all Gaussian operations including conditional dynamics. We also show that the non-Gaussian detector is superior to the homodyne detector in a continuous variable quantum key distribution scheme.
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Standard protocols in optical communication systems employ coherent states of light as the information carriers. The quantum nature inherent to these states introduces a fundamental complexity into the decoding process. In particular, when dealing with attenuated signals, the overlap between different states precludes the possibility of perfectly discriminate them. In this study, we investigate the performance of conventional and nonconventional quantum discrimination strategies under different informational metrics. We focus our analysis on binary coherent states within the ideal case of a lossless channel. The usual homodyne receiver was studied in comparison with the Kennedy and the optimized displacement receiver. We find that nonconventional strategies employing non-Gaussian measurements surpass the conventional homodyne discrimination scheme according to measurement error probability and mutual information.