In an entanglement summoning task, a set of distributed, co-operating parties attempt to fulfill requests to prepare entanglement between distant locations. The parties share limited communication resources: timing constraints may require the entangled state be prepared before some pairs of distant parties can communicate, and a restricted set of links in a quantum network may further constrain communication. Building on earlier work, we continue the characterization of entanglement summoning. We give an if and only if condition on entanglement summoning tasks with only bidirected causal connections, and provide a set of sufficient conditions addressing the most general case containing both oriented and bidirected causal connections. Our results rely on the recent development of entanglement sharing schemes.
In an entanglement summoning task, a set of distributed, co-operating parties attempt to fulfill requests to prepare entanglement between distant locations. The parties share limited communication resources: timing constraints may require the entangled state be prepared before some pairs of distant parties can communicate, and a restricted set of links in a quantum network may further constrain communication. Building on earlier work, we continue the characterization of entanglement summoning. We give an if and only if condition on entanglement summoning tasks with only bidirected causal connections, and provide a set of sufficient conditions addressing the most general case containing both oriented and bidirected causal connections. Our results rely on the recent development of entanglement sharing schemes.
Abstract In many quantum information processing protocols, entangled states shared among parties are an important resource. In this article, we study how bipartite states may be distributed in the context of a quantum network limited by timing constraints. We explore various tasks that plausibly arise in this context, and characterize the achievability of several of these in settings where only one-way communication is allowed. We provide partial results in the case where two-way communication is allowed. This builds on earlier work on summoning single and bipartite systems.
The topology of classical networks is determined by physical links between nodes, and after a network request the links are used to establish the desired connections. Quantum networks offer the possibility to generate different kinds of entanglement prior to network requests, which can substitute links and allow one to fulfill multiple network requests with the same resource state. We utilize this to design entanglement-based quantum networks tailored to their desired functionality, independent of the underlying physical structure. The kind of entanglement to be stored is chosen to fulfill all desired network requests (i.e. parallel bipartite or multipartite communications between specific nodes chosen from some finite set), but in such a way that the storage requirement is minimized. This can be accomplished by using multipartite entangled states shared between network nodes that can be transformed by local operations to different target states. We introduce a clustering algorithm to identify connected clusters in the network for a given desired functionality, i.e. the required network topology of the entanglement-based network, and a merging algorithm that constructs multipartite entangled resource states with reduced memory requirement to fulfill all desired network requests. This leads to a significant reduction in required time and resources, and provides a powerful tool to design quantum networks that is unique to entanglement-based networks.
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 In a variant of communication tasks, players cooperate in choosing their local strategies to compute a given task later, working separately. Utilizing quantum bits for communication and sharing entanglement between parties is a recognized method to enhance performance in these situations. In this work, we introduce the game for which three parties, Alice, Bob and Charlie, would like to discover the hidden order in which they make the moves. We show the advantage of quantum strategies that use shared entanglement and local operations over classical setups for discriminating operations’ composition order. The role of quantum resources improving the probability of successful discrimination is also investigated. Our research provides a basis for examining computational model featuring a specific gate set while examining the diverse operations achievable through permutations of its elements.
Microscopic physical systems requiring a quantum description are increasingly being harnessed to develop useful technologies. The appeal of such an approach lies in the fact that quantum systems possess inherently different properties from those observed on a macroscopic scale. Uniquely quantum phenomena, such as entanglement, offer new tools for performing experimental tasks. For instance, the use of quantum systems for implementing cryptographic protocols and performing computation has caused significant excitement in recent years as it seems likely that the quantum approach offers an advantage over purely classical implementations. The development of quantum technologies leads to the concept of quantum resources. One key quantum resource that lies at the heart of the divergence between quantum and classical descriptions is that of entanglement. However, for entanglement to act as a resource, it must be possible for the parties (we will restrict ourselves to only two) sharing the entanglement to verify its presence. This may seem like a simple task, however, verifying the properties of quantum systems can be nontrivial. To make matters more complicated, there are often constraints under which the parties sharing the quantum systems find themselves which further restrict the ability of the quantum systems to act as a resource. One family of constraints arises when the two parties are dealing with quantum systems which have properties constrained by a conservation law, or some other constraint which limits knowledge of the properties of the local subsystems. These constraints can be expressed using the well studied formalism of superselection rules. When a superselection rule applies to quantum systems it can be ambiguous as to whether entanglement survives between the systems. This thesis considers a situation that arises naturally in a nuclear magnetic resonance experiment where two parties share many copies of identical quantum systems. In this case a superselection rule associated with the finite symmetric group applies due to the indistinguishability of the systems. The concept of a reference frame for the symmetric group is used to alleviate the effect of the superselection rule and demonstrate when entanglement survives despite the constraint of indistinguishability. In addition to this, a situation which goes beyond the superselection formalism is considered, one where the operations performable by the two parties are further constrained. It is shown that despite this stronger constraint, it is still possible in principle to verify the existence of entanglement experimentally as demonstrated by the violation of a Bell inequality. Methods for verifying the presence of entanglement can also prove useful in characterising the properties of entangled quantum systems. Such characterisation may offer insight into the possible advantages offered by quantum systems over their classical counterparts. It becomes possible to more accurately characterise entangled systems by considering a conceptual constraint under which the two parties may find themselves. This is the situation that arises when one of the parties, say Bob, distrusts the other, Alice. In this situation, Alice can only convince Bob of the presence of their entanglement if the entangled system they share possesses a certain property. We term this property steerability, after Schrödinger’s term “steering” [Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc. 31, 553 (1935)] for the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen effect. This thesis offers a rigorous characterisation of steering in a quantum information context and probes a number of questions relating to this property. First, a number of examples are presented which demonstrate state steerability which is a uniquely quantum property possessed by certain entangled states. Second, the task of experimentally detecting steerability, and thus entanglement, is addressed through the introduction of steerability criteria. Finally two more detailed examples are explored which illustrate various aspects of the measurement dependence of steerability in realistic experiments.
In this thesis, we investigate two different aspects of entanglement and classical communication in distributed quantum computation (DQC). In the first part, we analyze implementable computation over a given quantum network resource by introducing a new concept, quantum network coding for quantum computation. We consider a setting of networks where quantum communication for each edge of a network is restricted to sending one-qubit, but classical communication is unrestricted. Specifically, we analyze implementable k-qubit unitary operations over a certain class of networks, called cluster networks. We show that any two-qubit unitary operation is implementable over the butterfly network and the grail network, which are fundamental primitive networks for network coding. We also obtain necessary and sufficient conditions for the probabilistic implementability of unitary operations over cluster networks. In the second part, we investigate resource tradeoffs in DQC. First, we show that entanglement required for local state discrimination can be substituted by less entanglement by increasing the rounds of classical communication. Second, we develop a new framework of deterministic joint quantum operations by using a causal relation between the outputs and inputs of the local operations without predefined causal order, called "classical communication" without predefined causal order (CC*). We show that local operations and CC* (LOCC*) is equivalent to the separable operation (SEP). This result indicates that entanglement-assisted LOCC implementing SEP can be simulated by LOCC* without entanglement. We also investigate the relationship between LOCC* and another formalism for deterministic joint quantum operations without assuming predefined causal order based on the quantum process formalism. As a result, we construct an example of non-LOCC SEP by using LOCC*.