We present examples of continuous variable (CV) states having high fidelity to a given target, say $F > 0.9$ or $F > 0.99$, and still showing striking differences in their physical properties, including classical and quantum states within the set, separable and entangled ones, or nearly Gaussian and strongly non-Gaussian ones. We also show that the phenomenon persists also when one imposes additional constraints on the energy or the squeezing fraction of the states, thus generally questioning the use of fidelity to assess properties of CV systems.
We present examples of continuous variable (CV) states having high fidelity to a given target, say F>0.9 or F>0.99, and still showing striking differences in their physical properties, including classical and quantum states within the set, separable and entangled ones, or nearly Gaussian and strongly non-Gaussian ones. We also show that the phenomenon persists also when one imposes additional constraints on the energy or the squeezing fraction of the states, thus generally questioning the use of fidelity to assess properties of CV systems.
We present examples of continuous variable (CV) states having high fidelity to a given target, say F > 0.9 or F > 0.99, and still showing striking differences in their physical properties, including classical and quantum states within the set, separable and entangled ones, or nearly Gaussian and strongly non-Gaussian ones. We also show that the phenomenon persists also when one imposes additional constraints on the energy or the squeezing fraction of the states, thus generally questioning the use of fidelity to assess properties of CV systems without a tomographic set of additional constraints.
Fidelity is a figure of merit widely employed in quantum technology in order to quantify similarity between quantum states and, in turn, to assess quantum resources or reconstruction techniques. Fidelities higher than, say, 0.9 or 0.99, are usually considered as a piece of evidence to say that two states are very close in the Hilbert space. On the other hand, on the basis of several examples for qubits and continuous variable systems, we show that such high fidelities may be achieved by pairs of states with considerably different physical properties, including separable and entangled states or classical and nonclassical ones. We conclude that fidelity as a tool to assess quantum resources should be employed with caution, possibly combined with additional constraints restricting the pool of achievable states, or only as a mere summary of a full tomographic reconstruction.
We experimentally address the significance of fidelity as a figure of merit in quantum state reconstruction of discrete (DV) and continuous-variable (CV) quantum optical systems. In particular, we analyze the use of fidelity in quantum homodyne tomography of CV states and maximum-likelihood polarization tomography of DV ones, focusing attention on nonclassicality, entanglement, and quantum discord as a function of fidelity to a target state. Our findings show that high values of fidelity, despite well quantifying geometrical proximity in the Hilbert space, may be obtained for states displaying opposite physical properties, e.g., quantum or semiclassical features. In particular, we analyze in detail the quantum-to-classical transition for squeezed thermal states of a single-mode optical system and for Werner states of a two-photon polarization qubit system.
The characterisation of quantum correlations, also known as entanglement, is central to quantum information theory. Operationally, entanglement gives rise to the notion of quantum non-locality, which challenges the ‘reality’ of quantum mechanics (adopting the terminology of Einstein, Podolski and Rosen) and arguably represents its most distinctive feature, in the sense that it calls for a departure from certain foundational tenets of classical physics. It should thus not come as a surprise that entanglement turns out to be a key resource for the implementation of a number of quantum communication protocols and also necessary to achieve computational speed-ups with quantum hardware, in the sense that accessing regions of the Hilbert space with entangled states allows one to shorten the computational depth of certain algorithms. Not surprisingly, generating and maintaining entanglement is generally difficult in practice, as it requires strong interactions between selected components of a system that must at the same time be isolated from the environment. Thanks to the techniques developed in quantum optical set-ups to achieve squeezed light, entanglement is, however, comparatively accessible with optical quantum continuous variables. As we shall see, in fact, continuous variable entanglement is closely related to the notion of squeezing. It is therefore of the utmost importance to be able to qualify and quantify the entanglement of quantum continuous variables, which is the subject matter of the present chapter. The first part of the chapter is devoted to techniques and criteria based on second moments to detect the entanglement of Gaussian states and also to the description of possible ways to quantify such quantum correlations, bearing in mind that the determination of entanglement monotones of clear operational significance is still an open problem, even in the restricted arena of Gaussian states. Although the criteria based on second moments are sufficient, but not necessary, for the detection of non-Gaussian entanglement too, we will push our analysis further by introducing more general criteria based on higher order statistical moments, which will be put to use to detect, on paper, the quantum correlations of an entangled cat-like state. We will also address the issues of entanglement distillation and quantum non-locality tests, in whose contexts we shall encounter other non-Gaussian operations and states, such as photon-subtracted states.
We present a detailed report on the decoherence of quantum states of continuous variable systems under the action of a quantum optical master equation resulting from the interaction with general Gaussian uncorrelated environments. The rate of decoherence is quantified by relating it to the decay rates of various, complementary measures of the quantum nature of a state, such as the purity, some non-classicality indicators in phase space, and, for two-mode states, entanglement measures and total correlations between the modes. Different sets of physically relevant initial configurations are considered, including one- and two-mode Gaussian states, number states, and coherent superpositions. Our analysis shows that, generally, the use of initially squeezed configurations does not help to preserve the coherence of Gaussian states, whereas it can be effective in protecting coherent superpositions of both number states and Gaussian wavepackets.
We present a detailed report on the decoherence of quantum states of continuous variable systems under the action of a quantum optical master equation resulting from the interaction with general Gaussian uncorrelated environments. The rate of decoherence is quantified by relating it to the decay rates of various, complementary measures of the quantum nature of a state, such as the purity, some non-classicality indicators in phase space, and, for two-mode states, entanglement measures and total correlations between the modes. Different sets of physically relevant initial configurations are considered, including one- and two-mode Gaussian states, number states, and coherent superpositions. Our analysis shows that, generally, the use of initially squeezed configurations does not help to preserve the coherence of Gaussian states, whereas it can be effective in protecting coherent superpositions of both number states and Gaussian wavepackets.