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arXiv:1802.05102 · Advanced Quantum Technologies

Experimental Two‐Way Communication with One Photon

Francesco Massa, Amir Moqanaki, Ämin Baumeler, Flavio Del Santo, Joshua A. Kettlewell, Borivoje Dakić, Philip Walther

Published Sep 18, 2019• 42 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Abstract Superposition of two or more states is one of the most fundamental concepts of quantum mechanics and provides a basis for several advantages offered by quantum information processing. This work reports the experimental demonstration of two‐way communication between two distant parties that can exchange only a single particle once, an impossible task in classical physics. This is achieved through preparation of a single photon in a coherent superposition of the two parties' locations. Furthermore, it is shown that this concept allows the parties to perform secure and anonymous quantum communication employing one particle per transmitted bit. These important features can lead to the realization of new quantum communication schemes, which are simultaneously anonymous, secure, and resource‐efficient.

DOI
10.1002/qute.201900050

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Abstract Superposition of two or more states is one of the most fundamental concepts of quantum mechanics and provides a basis for several advantages offered by quantum information processing. This work reports the experimental demonstration of two‐way communication between two distant parties that can exchange only a single particle once, an impossible task in classical physics. This is achieved through preparation of a single photon in a coherent superposition of the two parties' locations. Furthermore, it is shown that this concept allows the parties to perform secure and anonymous quantum communication employing one particle per transmitted bit. These important features can lead to the realization of new quantum communication schemes, which are simultaneously anonymous, secure, and resource‐efficient.
In this Letter we show that communication when restricted to a single information carrier (i.e., single particle) and finite speed of propagation is fundamentally limited for classical systems. On the other hand, quantum systems can surpass this limitation. We show that communication bounded to the exchange of a single quantum particle (in superposition of different spatial locations) can result in "two-way signaling," which is impossible in classical physics. We quantify the discrepancy between classical and quantum scenarios by the probability of winning a game played by distant players. We generalize our result to an arbitrary number of parties and we show that the probability of success is asymptotically decreasing to zero as the number of parties grows, for all classical strategies. In contrast, quantum strategy allows players to win the game with certainty.
Quantum communication is an important branch of quantum technology. It can safely transmit private information between legitimate parties and its unconditional security is guaranteed by quantum physics. So far, deterministic secure quantum communication without entanglement usually transmits single photons in two-way quantum channels. We propose a deterministic secure quantum communication proposal, and it requires a one-way quantum channel and a classical channel. In our protocol, a sender encodes logical bits by using two conjugate bases consisting of the polarization and time-bin degrees of freedom of a photon and transmits it to a receiver over a quantum channel. Upon receiving this photon, the receiver measures it randomly in two bases and can decode the bit deterministically with the help of the sender. Any attack from eavesdroppers will be detected by the legitimate parties. Furthermore, this protocol can be implemented with linear-optic elements and single-photon detectors.
One-way deterministic secure quantum communication protocol based on single photons is proposed in this paper, in which the XOR operation by bits of the information sequence and random sequence is performed and the checking sequence is inserted before the sender’s coding operation. When the photons arrive at the receiver, they are delayed at the receiver, and the sender then publishes the coding basis, so the photons can be measured in the correct basis. Then the two parties estimate the security of the quantum channel by the checking bits. When the channel is secure the sender publishes the random bits where the receiver has results, and the information sequence can be recovered by the receiver. Even the channel is not secure, what the eavesdropper gets is the random sending sequence, the information sequence is still secure. This protocol has the advantages of higher transmission efficiency and easier implementation compared with the two-way communication.
Nonclassical features of quantum systems have the potential to strengthen the way we currently exchange information. In this paper, we explore this enhancement on the most basic level of single particles. To be more precise, we compare how well multiparty information can be transmitted to a single receiver using just one classical or quantum particle. Our approach is based on a multiple-access communication model in which messages can be encoded into a single particle that is coherently distributed across multiple spatial modes. Theoretically, we derive lower bounds on the accessible information in the quantum setting that strictly separate it from the classical scenario. This separation is found whenever there is more than one sender, and also when there is just a single sender who has a shared phase reference with the receiver. When there is only one sender, the separation is impossible without a shared phase reference due to the famous Holevo's bound. Experimentally, we present a proof-of-principle demonstration of such quantum advantage in single-particle communication by implementing a multiport interferometer with messages being encoded along the different trajectories. Specifically, we consider a two-sender communication protocol built by a three-port optical interferometer. In this scenario, the rate sum achievable with a classical particle is upper bounded by one bit, while we experimentally observe a rate sum of $1.0152\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.0034$ bits in the quantum setup.
Demonstrating a quantum advantage with currently available experimental systems is of utmost importance in quantum information science. While this remains elusive for quantum computation, the field of communication complexity offers the possibility to already explore and showcase this advantage for useful tasks. Here, we define such a task, the Sampling Matching problem, which is inspired by the Hidden Matching problem and features an exponential gap between quantum and classical protocols in the one-way communication model. Our problem allows by its conception a photonic implementation based on encoding in the phase of coherent states of light, the use of a fixed size linear optic circuit, and single-photon detection. This enables us to demonstrate in a proof-of-principle experiment an advantage in the transmitted information resource over the best known classical protocol, something impossible to reach for the original Hidden Matching problem. Our demonstration has implications in quantum verification and cryptographic settings.