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arXiv:1712.05682

Interstellar communication. V. Introduction to photon information efficiency (in bits per photon)

Michael Hippke

Published Dec 14, 2017• 5 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

How many bits of information can a single photon carry? Intuition says "one", but this is incorrect. With an alphabet based on the photon's time of arrival, energy, and polarization, several bits can be encoded. In this introduction to photon information efficiency, we explain how to calculate the maximum number of bits per photon depending on the number of encoding modes, noise, and losses.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1712.05682

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How many bits of information can a single photon carry? Intuition says "one", but this is incorrect. With an alphabet based on the photon's time of arrival, energy, and polarization, several bits can be encoded. In this introduction to photon information efficiency, we explain how to calculate the maximum number of bits per photon depending on the number of encoding modes, noise, and losses.
We show how to generate, encode, transmit and detect single photons. By using single photons we can address two of the more challenging problems that communication engineers face nowadays: capacity and security. Indeed, by decreasing the number of photons used to encode each bit, we can efficiently explore the full capacity to carry information of optical fibers, and we can guarantee privacy at the physical layer. We present results for single and entangled photon generation. We encode information in the photons polarization and after transmission we retrieve that information. We discuss the impact of fiber birefringence on the photons polarization.
We address the problem of how efficiently information can be encoded into and read out reliably from a passive reflective surface that encodes classical data by modulating the amplitude and phase of incident light. We show that nature imposes no fundamental upper limit to the number of bits that can be read per expended probe photon and demonstrate the quantum-information-theoretic trade-offs between the photon efficiency (bits per photon) and the encoding efficiency (bits per pixel) of optical reading. We show that with a coherent-state (ideal laser) source, an on-off (amplitude-modulation) pixel encoding, and shot-noise-limited direct detection (an overly optimistic model for commercial CD and DVD drives), the highest photon efficiency achievable in principle is about 0.5 bits read per transmitted photon. We then show that a coherent-state probe can read unlimited bits per photon when the receiver is allowed to make joint (inseparable) measurements on the reflected light from a large block of phase-modulated memory pixels. Finally, we show an example of a spatially entangled nonclassical light probe and a receiver design---constructible using a single-photon source, beam splitters, and single-photon detectors---that can in principle read any number of error-free bits of information. The probe is a single photon prepared in a uniform coherent superposition of multiple orthogonal spatial modes, i.e., a WWW state. The code and joint-detection receiver complexity required by a coherent-state transmitter to achieve comparable photon efficiency performance is shown to be much higher in comparison to that required by the WWW-state transceiver, although this advantage rapidly disappears with increasing loss in the system.
Quantum cryptography was designed to provide a new approach to the problem of distributing keys for private-key cryptography. The principal idea is that security can be ensured by exploiting the laws of quantum physics and, in particular, by the fact that any attempt to measure a quantum state will change it uncontrollably. This change can be detected by the legitimate users of the communication channel and so reveal to them the presence of an eavesdropper. In this paper I explain (briefly) how quantum key distribution works and some of the progress that has been made towards making this a viable technology. With the principles of quantum communication and quantum key distribution firmly established, it is perhaps time to consider how efficient it can be made. It is interesting to ask, in particular, how many bits of information might reasonably be encoded securely on each photon. The use of photons entangled in their time of arrival might make it possible to achieve data rates in excess of 10 bits per photon.
In the beginning was the photon, and the photon was with information. Theoretically speaking, a photon can travel arbitrarily long before it enters into a detector, which then clicks. How much information can a photon carry? We study a bipartite asymmetric protocol as the extension of that proposed by Del Santo and Dakic. Suppose that Alice and Bob are distant from each other and each of them has an nnn-bit string. They are tasked to exchange the information of their local n-bit strings with each other, using only a single photon during the communication. It has been shown that the superposition of different spatial locations in a Mach-Zehnder (MZ) interferometer enables bipartite local encodings. We prove that, after the photon's travelling through a cascade of nnn-level MZ interferometers in our protocol, the one of Alice or Bob whose detector clicks can access the other's full information of nnn-bit string, while the other can gain one-bit of information. That is, the wave-particle duality makes two-way signaling possible, and a single photon can carry infinite information as nnn goes infinite.