In quantum information and quantum computing, the carrier of information is a quantum system and information is encoded in its state. Secure communication schemes employ non‐orthogonal states that can not be discriminated with 100% probability of success. We briefly review various possible optimized state discrimination strategies since they provide a quantitative figure of merit for the acceptable noise level in quantum communication. We also report on recent results in two special areas. First, we consider discrimination between mixed quantum states. Second, we show that communication via completely unknown quantum states is possible and discuss programmable quantum state discriminators that accomplish this task optimally.
In quantum information and quantum computing, the carrier of information is a quantum system and information is encoded in its state. Secure communication schemes employ non‐orthogonal states that can not be discriminated with 100% probability of success. We briefly review various possible optimized state discrimination strategies since they provide a quantitative figure of merit for the acceptable noise level in quantum communication. We also report on recent results in two special areas. First, we consider discrimination between mixed quantum states. Second, we show that communication via completely unknown quantum states is possible and discuss programmable quantum state discriminators that accomplish this task optimally.
In quantum information and quantum computing, the carrier of information is some quantum system and information is encoded in its state. The state, however, is not an observable in quantum mechanics, thus a fundamental problem arises: after processing the information it has to be read out or, in other words, the state of the system must be determined. When the possible target states are orthogonal, this is a relatively simple task, provided the set of possible target states is known. But when the possible target states are not orthogonal their discrimination is far from being trivial even if their set is known. Thus the problem of discriminating among non-orthogonal states is ubiquitous in quantum information and quantum computing, underlying all communication and computing schemes. It is the subject of this talk to review recent theoretical and experimental advances in this field.
In quantum information and quantum computing, the carrier of information is some quantum system and information is encoded in its state. After processing the state in the quantum processor, the information has to be read out. Clearly, this task is equivalent to determining the final state of the system. We begin by briefly reviewing various possible state discrimination strategies that are optimal with respect to some reasonable criteria and report on recent advances in the unambiguous discrimination of mixed quantum states. This strategy has been successfully applied to devise a class of novel probabilistic quantum algorithms and has been demonstrated experimentally, using a linear optical implementation via generalized interferometers. In the second part we present a scheme for communication via completely unknown quantum states. In this context we discuss programmable quantum state discriminators that are universal, i.e. perform optimally on average, independently of the actual states used for the communication scheme. We conclude with a discussion of possible experimental implementations of the proposed device.
Quantum state discrimination underlies various applications in quantum information processing tasks. It essentially describes the distinguishability of quantum systems in different states, and the general process of extracting classical information from quantum systems. It is also useful in quantum information applications, such as the characterization of mutual information in cryptographic protocols, or as a technique for deriving fundamental theorems on quantum foundations. It has deep connections to physical principles such as relativistic causality. Quantum state discrimination traces a long history of several decades, starting with the early attempts to formalize information processing of physical systems such as optical communication with photons. Nevertheless, in most cases, the problems of finding optimal strategies of quantum state discrimination remain unsolved, and related applications are valid in some limited cases only. The present review aims to provide an overview on quantum state discrimination, covering some recent progress, and addressing applications in some selected areas. This review serves to strengthen the link between results in quantum state discrimination and quantum information applications, by showing the ways in which the fundamental results are exploited in applications and vice versa.
In quantum information processing and quantum computing protocols the carrier of information is a quantum system and information is encoded in the state of a quantum system. After processing the information it has to be read out what is equivalent to determining the final state of the system. When the possible final states are not orthogonal this is a highly nontrivial task that constitutes the general area of what is known as quantum state discrimination. It consists in finding measurement schemes that, according to some figure of merit, will determine the state of the system. Optimized measurement schemes often lead to generalized measurements (Positive Operator Valued Measures [POVMs]). In this tutorial review we illustrate the power of the POVM concept on examples relevant to applications in quantum cryptography. In order to keep the flow of the presentation we give a brief introduction to the quantum theory of measurements, including generalized measurements (POVMs), in the Appendices.
In quantum information processing and quantum computing protocols information is encoded in the state of a quantum system. After processing the information it has to be read out which is equivalent to determining the final state of the system. When the possible final states are not orthogonal this is a highly nontrivial task that constitutes the general area of what is known as quantum state discrimination. It consists in finding measurement schemes that, according to some figure of merit, will determine the state of the system. Optimized measurement schemes often lead to generalized measurements (Positive Operator Valued Measures, POVMs). In this tutorial review we begin with a brief introduction to the theory of generalized measurements and illustrate the power of the concept on examples relevant to applications in quantum cryptography.
Quantum communication utilizes the quantum state as information carrier. The transmission of quantum states is therefore a precondition for various quantum communication protocols. Photons play a central role in quantum communication since they are fast, cheap, easy to control and interact weakly with the environment. However, the widely used polarization degree of freedom of photons is vulnerable to the noise during the transmission. In this article, we review two main methods to deal with the channel noise, i.e., the quantum error rejection scheme and fault tolerant quantum communication. To transmit an arbitrary single-photon state, Li and Deng proposed two faithful state transmission schemes only by resorting to passive linear optics. The success probability can be (2N+1-1)/2N+1 by introducing a wave splitter composed of N unbalance interferometers. Compared with other quantum error rejection schemes, these two scheme are practical both in maneuverability and resource consumption. They are not only suitable for single-photon pure state transmission but also able to be used for transmitting mixed state, which makes them useful for one-way quantum communication. The success probability of error rejection is usually less than 100% since some error cases are rejected. To realize complete fault tolerant quantum communication, decoherence free subspace can be used to encode quantum information. In 2008, Li et al. proposed two efficient quantum key distribution schemes over two different collective-noise channels. The noiseless subspaces are made up of two Bell states and the spatial degree of freedom is introduced to form two nonorthogonal bases. Although entangled states are employed, only single-photon measurements are required to read the information. Later, the scheme is generalized to an efficient one which transmits n-1 bits information via n Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen pairs and many fault tolerant quantum communication schemes were proposed. We compare the practicality of different anti-noise schemes based on maneuverability and resource consumption and a perspective of these two research directions is given in the last section.