A central problem in quantum information theory is understanding how quantum resources can be used to communicate information more efficiently than classical resources. We introduce quantum dense network coding -- a protocol that transmits the output of a non-Boolean function to a receiver using provably half as many qubits as bits for each sender by not transmitting the entirety of the function inputs. We show this advantage requires both shared entanglement and quantum communication, is robust to noise, and the gap in success probability between quantum and classical communication can be amplified exponentially in the number of senders. Finally, we show that dense network coding gives rise to a novel, information-theoretically secure, quantum cryptographic protocol, which we call measurement-device-independent quantum key growing.
A central problem in quantum information theory is understanding how quantum resources can be used to communicate information more efficiently than classical resources. We introduce quantum dense network coding -- a protocol that transmits the output of a non-Boolean function to a receiver using provably half as many qubits as bits for each sender by not transmitting the entirety of the function inputs. We show this advantage requires both shared entanglement and quantum communication, is robust to noise, and the gap in success probability between quantum and classical communication can be amplified exponentially in the number of senders. Finally, we show that dense network coding gives rise to a novel, information-theoretically secure, quantum cryptographic protocol, which we call measurement-device-independent quantum key growing.
Practical tests for witnessing entanglement in the presence of noise are needed to verify and apply entanglement-based applications in real-world communication networks. Quantum dense network coding is a communication protocol that uses an entangled state preparation together with quantum communication to halve the amount of communication needed to evaluate certain bijective functions in networks having multiple senders and one receiver. In this work, we consider a dense network coding protocol that uses graph state entanglement to implement a family of affine transformations, we derive a bound on the success probability that can be achieved by classical networks, and we show that the noise robustness exponentially amplifies with the number of senders. We apply our results in a semi-device-independent protocol for robustly estimating the effective visibility of graph states and measurement bases. Overall, our approaches are robust to noise, can support the usage of uncharacterized state preparations or measurements, and can be applied to any graph state.
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.
The quantum dense-coding (DC) protocol, which has no security feature, deals with the transmission of classical information encoded in a quantum state by using shared entanglement between a single sender and a single receiver. Its appropriate variant has been established as a quantum key distribution (QKD) scheme for shared two-qubit maximally entangled states, with the security proof utilizing the uncertainty relation of complementary observables and the Shor-Preskill entanglement purification scheme. We present the DC-based QKD protocol for higher-dimensional systems and report the lower bounds on the secret key rate, when the shared state is a two-qudit maximally entangled state, and mixtures of maximally entangled states with different ranks. The analysis also includes the impact of noisy channels on the secure key rates, before and after encoding. In both the noiseless and the noisy scenarios, we demonstrate that the key rate as well as the robustness of the protocol against noise increases with the dimension. Further, we prove that the set of useless states in the DC-based QKD protocol is convex and compact.
Quantum communication, as a vital area of quantum information science, aims to leverage quantum phenomena—particularly entanglement—to achieve tasks that are impossible or inefficient in classical systems. It plays a key role in the development of secure communication protocols and advanced information processing. This paper focuses on one such protocol, dense coding, which enables the transmission of two classical bits using only one entangled quantum particle.”We introduce the mathematical and physical foundations of quantum communication, such as the entangled state and Kronecker product. Then we propose the quantum communication protocol, namely dense coding using Bell states. It offer unique advantages that are beyond the classical parts. For this purpose, we in detail analyze the quantum measurements using Pauli gates and identity matrix, as well as the transmission of particle from Alice to Bob. They are necessary steps for dense coding. Then we analyze how Bob finishes the protocol using measurement over two qubits.
Measurement incompatibility enables quantum advantages in communication and state discrimination. It is also necessary for Bell nonlocality, which is used in device-independent protocols for quantum key distribution and private randomness generation. Classical communication can influence the receiver's outcome and must therefore be accounted for when certifying measurement incompatibility. We introduce union maximal leakage, which quantifies the information needed for a common classical explanation of all observed probabilities and is computed from them by a linear program. If a message of at most k bits precedes the receiver's independent measurement choice, compatible measurements for each message give union maximal leakage at most k. This bound holds with any input-independent nonsignalling shared resource. In quantum theory, a violation also implies that the initially shared state is entangled. Conversely, union maximal leakage determines the minimum classical communication needed to reproduce the observations with compatible measurements and arbitrary nonsignalling assistance. For a fixed shared quantum state and receiver measurements, a violation is possible exactly when, for some message value, the receiver's measurements are Bell-nonlocal against two-outcome sender measurements on that state. For binary receiver outcomes, we show that a violation also certifies randomness private from the sender, even when the receiver's measurement depends on the sender's message and the sender retains quantum side information. We quantify this privacy through an explicit conditional entropy bound and establish composably secure randomness extraction in sequential protocols with device memory.
In quantum communication, the concept of dense coding traditionally relies on maximally entangled states as quantum channels. Recent advancements have expanded this framework to include non-maximally entangled states within the probabilistic dense coding paradigm. However, such schemes introduce a significant limitation: the receiver cannot always retrieve the complete dense coding information sent by the sender. Consequently, the receiver must inform the sender of the amount of information successfully received. Based on this feedback, the sender determines whether retransmission is necessary, leading to inefficient use of the quantum channel and reduced communication efficiency. To address these shortcomings, we propose an alternative deterministic quantum dense coding scheme that utilizes non-maximally entangled states as the quantum channel. This deterministic approach eliminates the need for retransmissions and significantly enhances communication efficiency while maintaining compatibility with non-maximally entangled states. Our scheme represents a substantial improvement over existing probabilistic methods and paves the way for more efficient quantum communication protocols.