Abstract A promising platform for semi-device-independent quantum information is prepare-and-measure experiments restricted only by a bound on the energy of the communication. Here, we investigate the role of shared entanglement in such scenarios. For classical communication, we derive a general correlation criterion for nonlocal resources and use it to show that entanglement can fail to be a resource in standard tasks. For quantum communication, we consider the basic primitive for energy-constrained communication, namely the probabilistic transmission of a bit, and show that the advantages of entanglement only can be unlocked by non-unitary encoding schemes that purposefully decohere the entangled state. We also find that these advantages can be increased by using entanglement of higher dimension than qubit. We leverage these insights to investigate the impact of entanglement for quantum random number generation, which is a standard application of these systems but whose security so far only has been established against classical side information. In the low-energy regime, our attacks on the protocol indicate that the security remains largely intact, thereby paving the way for strengthened security without more complex setups and with negligible performance reductions.
Abstract A promising platform for semi-device-independent quantum information is prepare-and-measure experiments restricted only by a bound on the energy of the communication. Here, we investigate the role of shared entanglement in such scenarios. For classical communication, we derive a general correlation criterion for nonlocal resources and use it to show that entanglement can fail to be a resource in standard tasks. For quantum communication, we consider the basic primitive for energy-constrained communication, namely the probabilistic transmission of a bit, and show that the advantages of entanglement only can be unlocked by non-unitary encoding schemes that purposefully decohere the entangled state. We also find that these advantages can be increased by using entanglement of higher dimension than qubit. We leverage these insights to investigate the impact of entanglement for quantum random number generation, which is a standard application of these systems but whose security so far only has been established against classical side information. In the low-energy regime, our attacks on the protocol indicate that the security remains largely intact, thereby paving the way for strengthened security without more complex setups and with negligible performance reductions.
We introduce new methods and tools to study and characterise classical and quantum correlations emerging from prepare-and-measure experiments with informationally restricted communication. We consider the most general kind of informationally restricted correlations, namely the ones formed when the sender is allowed to prepare statistical mixtures of mixed states, showing that contrary to what happens in Bell nonlocality, mixed states can outperform pure ones. We then leverage these tools to derive device-independent witnesses of the information content of quantum communication, witnesses for different quantum information resources, and demonstrate that these methods can be used to develop a new avenue for semi-device independent random number generators.
Abstract Entanglement and quantum communication are paradigmatic resources in quantum information science leading to correlations between systems that have no classical analogue. Correlations due to entanglement when communication is absent have for long been studied in Bell scenarios. Correlations due to quantum communication when entanglement is absent have been studied extensively in prepare-and-measure (PM) scenarios in the last decade. Here, we set out to understand and investigate correlations in scenarios that involve both entanglement and communication, focussing on entanglement-assisted (EA) PM scenarios. In a recent companion paper (arXiv: 2103.10748 ), we investigated correlations based on unrestricted entanglement. Here, our focus is on scenarios with restricted entanglement. We establish several elementary relations between standard classical and quantum communication and their EA counterparts. In particular, while it was already known that bits or qubits assisted by two-qubit entanglement between the sender and receiver constitute a stronger resource than bare bits or qubits, we show that higher-dimensional entanglement further enhance the power of bits or qubits. We also provide a characterisation of generalised dense coding protocols, a natural subset of EA quantum communication protocols, finding that they can be understood as standard quantum communication protocols in real-valued Hilbert space. Though such dense coding protocols can convey up to two bits of information, we provide evidence, perhaps counter-intuitively, that resources with a small information capacity, such as a bare qutrits, can sometimes produce stronger correlations. Along the way we leave several conjectures and conclude with a list of interesting open problems.
We investigate the quantum advantage that can arise in typical two-party communication scenarios, where the sender and the receiver are allowed to share prior correlations. Focusing on communication tasks constrained by the distinguishability of the sender's inputs, we demonstrate that entanglement-assisted communication with both classical and quantum message can outperform classical communication supplemented with shared randomness. We begin by developing a general framework for communication tasks with pre-shared correlations. Within this framework, we establish an equivalence among entanglement-assisted classical communication, entanglement-assisted quantum communication, and quantum communication, showing that no hierarchy exists between these three paradigms. We then investigate the scenario where the receiver has no input and prove that no advantage can arise in this case. However, an advantage in the entanglement-assisted setting emerges once additional constraints are imposed on the dimension of the communicated message. This further highlights the superiority of entanglement-assisted classical communication over standard quantum communication. Then we demonstrate several tasks where the entanglement-assisted protocol using one-bit communication proves to be advantageous over classical communication. Finally, by constructing an explicit class of communication tasks, we show that a non-maximally entangled states outperform the maximally entangled state as a pre-shared resource between the communicating parties.
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.
Abstract Prepare-and-measure scenarios (pm), in their many forms, can be seen as the basic building blocks of communication tasks. As such, they can be used to analyze a diversity of classical and quantum protocols—of which dense coding and random access codes are key examples—in a unified manner. In particular, the use of entanglement as a resource in pm scenarios have only recently started to be systematically investigated, and many crucial questions remain open. In this work, we explore such scenarios and provide answers to some seminal questions. More specifically, we show that, in scenarios where entanglement is a free resource, quantum messages are equivalent to classical ones with twice the capacity. We also prove that, in such scenarios, it is always advantageous for the parties to share entangled states of dimension greater than the transmitted message. Finally, we show that unsteerable states cannot provide advantages in classical communication tasks, thus proving that not all entangled states are useful resources in these scenarios.
A key aspect in quantum information is to understand the advantage offered by quantum systems over classical ones in communication tasks. In recent years, a fundamental approach to this problem has been developed, focusing on quantum correlations in prepare-and-measure scenarios. Inspired by the developments in Bell nonlocality and device-independent information processing, this line of research aims to characterize the possibilities and limits of quantum systems for communication, in particular to precisely capture the advantage they offer over classical systems. In addition to fundamental insights, these ideas also underpin the concept of semi-device-independent quantum information processing. Exploring trade-offs between security, performance and ease-of-implementation, this approach opens promising directions for novel quantum information processing technologies and devices. A number of protocols and proof-of-principle demonstrations have been reported in recent years, in particular for quantum randomness certification and key distribution. Here, we provide a comprehensive introduction to quantum prepare-and-measure correlations and semi-device independent applications.