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Science

Symmetric photons make good communicators

I. S. Osborne

Published Nov 20, 2014• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Quantum Communication Future communication networks will be based on quantum mechanics and will rely on the ability to store quantum information in quantum nodes and transfer that information between them. Photons offer the ability to transfer information over long distances, but that requires that single photons be emitted and detected reliably at each end of the communication channel—a feat that requires the photons to be symmetric. Using a superconducting-based quantum circuit, Pechal et al. demonstrate how to generate the symmetric microwave photons that will be necessary to carry quantum information successfully. Phys. Rev. X 4 , 041010 (2014).

DOI
10.1126/science.346.6212.961-d

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Quantum Communication
Future communication networks will be based on quantum mechanics and will rely on the ability to store quantum information in quantum nodes and transfer that information between them. Photons offer the ability to transfer information over long distances, but that requires that single photons be emitted and detected reliably at each end of the communication channel—a feat that requires the photons to be symmetric. Using a superconducting-based quantum circuit, Pechal et al. demonstrate how to generate the symmetric microwave photons that will be necessary to carry quantum information successfully.
Phys. Rev. X 4 , 041010 (2014).
One of the most promising ways to transfer quantum information between superconducting qubits is with microwave photons. Enhancing direct quantum channels by time-bin encoding techniques, which map qubit states to single-photon states emitted at different times, allows the detection of photon-loss errors, and thus heralded quantum communication is possible. The authors realize and experimentally benchmark an error-detection scheme that allows them to select only experimental runs in which the photon state was transmitted successfully, yielding significantly improved fidelity of the transfer in this post-selected setting.
Single photons are expected to play a key role in tomorrow's quantum communication networks, owing to the robustness of photonic quantum states and their ability to travel long distances. This study demonstrates a generator that can give individual photons a desired ``shape'', which can increase their efficiency when used in a quantum network. Here the emission of an artificial atom (a superconducting circuit) is controlled by manipulating quantum vacuum fluctuations on nanosecond timescales. This tunable coupling principle could also see use in controlling quantum interactions in a variety of applications beyond single-photon generation.
Quantum communication, our ability to transmission quantum information between remote locations, is a primitive operation necessary for any future quantum internet. At its heart quantum communication relies on establishing entangled links between remote locations which can then be used to teleport quantum data. The ultimate performance of such approaches is limited by photon losses in the optical fiber channels. We introduce the concept of quantum multiplexing, which allows us to both minimize the number of photons needed in the entanglement distribution processing while at the same time enhancing the quality of the entangled pairs generated. Our approach should improve the performance of quantum communication systems and repeater networks. © 2019 The Author(s)