We show that weakly entangled states can improve communication over a qubit channel using only separate, interference-free, measurements of individual photons. We introduce a communication task corresponding to the cryptographic primitive known as secret sharing and show that all steerable two-qubit isotropic states provide a quantum advantage in the success rate using only product measurements. Furthermore, we show that such measurements can even reveal communication advantages from noisy partially entangled states that admit no quantum steering. We then go further and consider a stochastic variant of secret sharing based on more-sophisticated, yet standard, partial Bell-state analyzers, and show that this reveals advantages also for a range of unsteerable isotropic states. By preparing polarization qubits in unsteerable states, we experimentally demonstrate increased success rates of both secret-sharing tasks beyond the best entanglement-unassisted qubit protocol. Our results reveal the capability of simple and scalable measurements in entanglement-assisted quantum communication to overcome large amounts of noise. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
We show that weakly entangled states can improve communication over a qubit channel using only separate, interference-free, measurements of individual photons. We introduce a communication task corresponding to the cryptographic primitive known as secret sharing and show that all steerable two-qubit isotropic states provide a quantum advantage in the success rate using only product measurements. Furthermore, we show that such measurements can even reveal communication advantages from noisy partially entangled states that admit no quantum steering. We then go further and consider a stochastic variant of secret sharing based on more-sophisticated, yet standard, partial Bell-state analyzers, and show that this reveals advantages also for a range of unsteerable isotropic states. By preparing polarization qubits in unsteerable states, we experimentally demonstrate increased success rates of both secret-sharing tasks beyond the best entanglement-unassisted qubit protocol. Our results reveal the capability of simple and scalable measurements in entanglement-assisted quantum communication to overcome large amounts of noise. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
Quantum entanglement plays a central role in many quantum communication protocols. It allows distant particles to share correlations beyond the limits of classical interactions. Entanglement is essential for superdense coding, quantum teleportation, and secure cryptographic key distribution in quantum communication. It is also a pillar for developing quantum networks, where the management and distribution of entanglement are crucial for connecting distant nodes. Although perfect entanglement is a sought-after ideal, experimental imperatives, including entanglement distribution over long distances, often limit the quality of entangled states. An important question is whether weaker entanglement still offers advantages. First, we study more general tasks than dense coding to show that simpler measurements, combined with entanglement, allow advantageous and sometimes even optimal qubit communication protocols to be obtained. We also demonstrate that simple measurements can generate quantum correlations that cannot be modelled by two classical communication bits and can constitute an optimal protocol with quantum resources. We implement a novel Bell-type inequality tailored for certifying full network non-locality (FNN) to develop certification methods guaranteeing security on an entanglement-based network. Our experiment uses two pairs of polarised entangled photons in a network configuration with three nodes, briefly referred to as a bilocal network scenario. Finally, we show that weakly entangled states can improve communication over a qubit channel using only separate (local) measurements on isotropic non-steerable two-qubit states, without interference, of individual photons, across two communication tasks: secret sharing and its stochastic variant.
Harnessing the advantages of shared entanglement for sending quantum messages often requires the implementation of complex two-particle entangled measurements. We investigate entanglement advantages in protocols that use only the simplest two-particle measurements, namely, product measurements. For experiments in which only the dimension of the message is known, we show that robust entanglement advantages are possible but that they are fundamentally limited by Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen steering. Subsequently, we propose a natural extension of the standard scenario for these experiments and show that it circumvents this limitation. This leads us to prove entanglement advantages from every entangled two-qubit Werner state, evidence its generalization to high-dimensional systems, and establish a connection to quantum teleportation. Our results reveal the power of product measurements for generating quantum correlations in entanglement-assisted communication and they pave the way for practical semi-device-independent entanglement certification well beyond the constraints of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen steering. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
Dense coding is the seminal example of how entanglement can boost qubit communication, from sending one bit to sending two bits. This is made possible by projecting separate particles onto a maximally entangled basis. We investigate more general communication tasks, in both theory and experiment, and show that simpler measurements enable strong and sometimes even optimal entanglement-assisted qubit communication protocols. Using only partial Bell state analysers for two qubits, we demonstrate quantum correlations that cannot be simulated with two bits of classical communication. Then, we show that there exists an established and operationally meaningful task for which product measurements are sufficient for the strongest possible quantum predictions based on a maximally entangled two-qubit state. Our results reveal that there are scenarios in which the power of entanglement in enhancing quantum communication can be harvested in simple and scalable optical experiments.
Entanglement is known to boost the efficiency of classical communication. In distributed computation, for instance, exploiting entanglement can reduce the number of communicated bits or increase the probability to obtain a correct answer. Entanglement-assisted classical communication protocols usually consist of two successive rounds: first, a Bell test round, in which the parties measure their local shares of the entangled state, and then a communication round, where they exchange classical messages. Here, we go beyond this standard approach and investigate adaptive uses of entanglement: we allow the receiver to wait for the arrival of the sender's message before measuring their share of the entangled state. We first show that such adaptive protocols improve the success probability in random access codes. Second, we show that once adaptive measurements are used, an entanglement-assisted bit becomes a strictly stronger resource than a qubit in prepare-and-measure scenarios. We briefly discuss the extension of these ideas to scenarios involving quantum communication and we identify resource inequalities.
Abstract In the standard Bell experiment, two parties perform local projective measurements on a shared pair of entangled qubits to generate nonlocal correlations. However, these measurements completely destroy the entanglement, rendering the post-measurement state unable for subsequent use. For a long time, it was believed that only unsharp measurements can be used to share quantum correlations. Remarkably, recent research has shown that classical randomness assisted projective measurements are sufficient for sharing nonlocality (Steffinlongo and Tavakoli 2022 Phys. Rev. Lett. 129 230402). Here, by stochastically combining no more than two different projective measurement strategies, we report an experimental observation of double Clauser–Horne–Shimony–Holt inequality violations with two measurements in a sequence made on each pair of maximally and partially entangled polarization photons. Our results reveal that the double violation achieved by partially entangled states can be 11 standard deviations larger than that achieved by maximally entangled ones. Our scheme eliminates the requirement for entanglement assistance in previous unsharp-measurement-based sharing schemes, making it experimentally easier. Our work provides possibilities for sharing other types of quantum correlations in various physical systems with projective measurements.
Abstract Quantum secret sharing is an important branch of quantum cryptography. In this paper, we firstly propose a simple four-party quantum secret sharing scheme with entangled states. Since the noisy channel has a great influence on the shared quantum secret, we analyze the impact of the noisy channel on quantum secret sharing and obtain the expression among the fidelity, noisy coefficient and shared quantum state coefficients. To enhance the fidelity of the shared secret, we use the weak measurement method to protect the scheme in noisy environment. Furthermore, we analyze the fidelity between the obtained secret and the initial one after the amplitude damped channel. Finally, we take the concrete quantum state as an example to compare with the original way and find that the weak measurement method has a certain significance to improve the fidelity of the secret state in the scheme.