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arXiv:2009.00108 · Physical Review A

Limit of Gaussian operations and measurements for Gaussian state discrimination and its application to state comparison

David E. Roberson, Shuro Izumi, Wojciech Roga, Jonas Schou Neergaard-Nielsen, Masahiro Takeoka, Ulrik L. Andersen

Published Feb 23, 2021• 4 citations
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Abstract

We determine the optimal method of discriminating and comparing quantum states from a certain class of multimode Gaussian states and their mixtures when arbitrary global Gaussian operations and general Gaussian measurements are allowed. We consider the so-called constant-$\stackrel{\ifmmode \hat{}\else \^{}\fi{}}{p}$ displaced states, which include mixtures of multimode coherent states arbitrarily displaced along a common axis. We first show that no global or local Gaussian transformations or generalized Gaussian measurements can lead to a better discrimination method than simple homodyne measurements applied to each mode separately and classical postprocessing of the results. This result is applied to binary state comparison problems. We show that homodyne measurements, separately performed on each mode, are the best Gaussian measurement for binary state comparison. We further compare the performance of the optimal Gaussian strategy for binary coherent states comparison with these of non-Gaussian strategies using photon detections.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.103.022423

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We determine the optimal method of discriminating and comparing quantum states from a certain class of multimode Gaussian states and their mixtures when arbitrary global Gaussian operations and general Gaussian measurements are allowed. We consider the so-called constant-p\ifmmode^\elseˆ\fi\stackrel{\ifmmode \hat{}\else \^{}\fi{}}{p}p\ifmmode^\elseˆ\fi​ displaced states, which include mixtures of multimode coherent states arbitrarily displaced along a common axis. We first show that no global or local Gaussian transformations or generalized Gaussian measurements can lead to a better discrimination method than simple homodyne measurements applied to each mode separately and classical postprocessing of the results. This result is applied to binary state comparison problems. We show that homodyne measurements, separately performed on each mode, are the best Gaussian measurement for binary state comparison. We further compare the performance of the optimal Gaussian strategy for binary coherent states comparison with these of non-Gaussian strategies using photon detections.
Consider two bosonic modes which are prepared in one of two possible Gaussian states with the same local energy: either a tensor-product thermal state (with zero correlations) or a separable Gaussian state with maximal correlations (with both classical and quantum correlations, the latter being quantified by quantum discord). For the discrimination of these states, we compare the optimal joint coherent measurement with the best local measurement based on single-mode Gaussian detections. We show how the coherent measurement always strictly outperforms the local detection strategy for both single- and multi-copy discrimination. This means that using local Gaussian measurements (assisted by classical communication) is strictly suboptimal in detecting discord. A better performance may only be achieved by either using non Gaussian measurements (non linear optics) or coherent non-local measurements.
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.
Are Gaussian measurements enough to distinguish between Gaussian states? Here, we tackle this question by focusing on the max-relative entropy as an operational distinguishability metric. Given two general multimode Gaussian states, we derive a condition, based on their covariance matrices, that completely determines whether or not there exists an optimal Gaussian measurement achieving the max-relative entropy. When the condition is satisfied, we find this optimal measurement explicitly. When the condition is not met, there is a strict gap between the distinguishability achievable by Gaussian measurements and the unconstrained max-relative entropy in which all measurements are allowed. We illustrate our results in the single-mode setting, and show examples of states for which this gap can be made arbitrarily large, revealing novel instances of Gaussian data hiding.
Quantum state discrimination plays a central role in quantum information and communication. For the discrimination of optical quantum states, the two most widely adopted measurement techniques are photon detection, which produces discrete outcomes, and homodyne detection, which produces continuous outcomes. While various protocols using photon detection have been proposed for optimal and near-optimal discrimination between two coherent states, homodyne detection is known to have higher error rates, with its minimum achievable error rate often referred to as the Gaussian limit. In this work, we demonstrate that, despite the fundamental differences between discretely labelled and continuously labelled measurements, continuously labelled non-Gaussian measurements can also achieve near-optimal coherent state discrimination. We design two discrimination protocols that surpass the Gaussian limit: one using non-Gaussian unitary operations with homodyne detection, and another based on orthogonal polynomials. Our results show that photon detection is not required for near-optimal coherent state discrimination and that we can achieve error rates close to the Helstrom bound at low energies with continuously labelled measurements. We also find that our schemes maintain an advantage over the photon detection-based Kennedy receiver for a moderate range of coherent state amplitudes.
A core problem in communications is the optimal discrimination of binary-phase-shift-keyed (BPSK) signals. A longstanding goal has been to reach the fundamental quantum limit, known as the Helstrom bound, for BPSK signals encoded in coherent states. However, due to technical constraints, proposals for reaching the bound remain impractical. In this letter we take an alternative approach: using only Gaussian optics - displaced squeezed states and homodyne detection - we achieve discrimination of BPSK signals with error rates below what can be achieved using coherent states and any quantum measurement.