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Chinese Physics B

Probabilistic direct counterfactual quantum communication

Sheng Zhang

Published Feb 1, 2017• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

It is striking that the quantum Zeno effect can be used to launch a direct counterfactual communication between two spatially separated parties, Alice and Bob. So far, existing protocols of this type only provide a deterministic counterfactual communication service. However, this counterfactuality should be payed at a price. Firstly, the transmission time is much longer than a classical transmission costs. Secondly, the chained-cycle structure makes them more sensitive to channel noises. Here, we extend the idea of counterfactual communication, and present a probabilistic-counterfactual quantum communication protocol, which is proved to have advantages over the deterministic ones. Moreover, the presented protocol could evolve to a deterministic one solely by adjusting the parameters of the beam splitters.

DOI
10.1088/1674-1056/26/2/020304

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It is striking that the quantum Zeno effect can be used to launch a direct counterfactual communication between two spatially separated parties, Alice and Bob. So far, existing protocols of this type only provide a deterministic counterfactual communication service. However, this counterfactuality should be payed at a price. Firstly, the transmission time is much longer than a classical transmission costs. Secondly, the chained-cycle structure makes them more sensitive to channel noises. Here, we extend the idea of counterfactual communication, and present a probabilistic-counterfactual quantum communication protocol, which is proved to have advantages over the deterministic ones. Moreover, the presented protocol could evolve to a deterministic one solely by adjusting the parameters of the beam splitters.
Recently, a novel direct counterfactual quantum communication protocol was proposed using chained quantum Zeno effect. We found that this protocol is far from being widely used in practical channels, due to the side effect of 'chained', which leads to a dramatic increase of the equivalent optical distance between Alice and Bob. Therefore, not only the transmission time of a single bit increases in multiple times, but also the protocol is more sensitive to the noise. Here, we proposed an improved protocol, in which quantum interference is employed to destroy the nested structure induced by 'chained' effect. Moreover, we proved that a better counterfactuality is easier to be achieved, and showed that our protocol outperforms the former in the presence of noises.
Abstract Counterfactual quantum communication is one of the most interesting facets of quantum communication, allowing two parties to communicate without any transmission of quantum or classical particles between the parties involved in the communication process. This aspect of quantum communication originates from the interaction-free measurements where the chained quantum Zeno effect plays an important role. Here, we propose a new counterfactual quantum communication protocol for transmitting an entangled state from a pair of electrons to two independent photons. Interestingly, the protocol proposed here shows that the counterfactual method can be employed to transfer information from house qubits to flying qubits. Following this, we show that the protocol finds uses in building quantum repeaters leading to a counterfactual quantum network, enabling counterfactual communication over a linear quantum network.
The classical theories of communication rely on the assumption that there has to be a flow of particles from Bob to Alice in order for him to send a message to her. We develop a quantum protocol that allows Alice to perceive Bob's message ``counterfactually''; that is, without Alice receiving any particles that have interacted with Bob. By utilizing a setup built on results from interaction-free measurements, we outline a communication protocol whereby the information travels in the opposite direction of the emitted particles. In comparison to previous attempts on such protocols, this one is such that a weak measurement at the message source would not leave a weak trace that could be detected by Alice's receiver. While some interaction-free schemes require a large number of carefully aligned beam splitters, our protocol is realizable with two or more beam splitters. We demonstrate this protocol by numerically solving the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation for a Hamiltonian that implements this quantum counterfactual phenomenon.
Quantum teleportation circumvents the uncertainty principle using dual channels: a quantum one consisting of previously-shared entanglement, and a classical one, together allowing the disembodied transport of an unknown quantum state over distance. It has recently been shown that a classical bit can be counterfactually communicated between two parties in empty space, “Alice” and “Bob”. Here, by using our “dual” version of the chained quantum Zeno effect to achieve a counterfactual CNOT gate, we propose a protocol for transporting an unknown qubit counterfactually, that is without any physical particles travelling between Alice and Bob—no classical channel and no previously-shared entanglement.
Counterfactual quantum communication---sending information between two remote parties without transmitting any physical particle over the channel---is unique in quantum protocols. By harnessing the nonlocality of counterfactual quantum protocols, we devise a distributed controlled NOT (DNOT) operation to transfer information in both directions at the same time. This new form of full-duplex communication, called quantum duplex coding, enables communicating parties to exchange either classical or quantum messages simultaneously and counterfactually by means of nonlocal controlled entanglement and/or disentanglement of the DNOT operation. We demonstrate the quantum duplex coding for both classical and quantum information using the (chained) quantum Zeno effect and show that these quantum duplex communication protocols form full-duplex binary and quantum erasure channels, respectively.