We present a quantum fingerprinting protocol relying on two-photon interference which does not require phase stabilization between the parties. Application of non-classical single photon states enhances its performance even for high transmission loss.
One of the standard communication complexity problems is deciding whether bit strings held by two separate parties Alice (A) and Bob (B) are equal or different. In the simultaneous message passing model, A and B send certain information to a Referee, who makes the decision. The overall goal is to minimize the amount of communication involved while not exceeding desired error probability. This is achieved by sending only fingerprints of the original n-bit strings. In the best classical protocols, these scale as O(√n) if A and B have no access to shared randomness [1]. The recently proposed [2] and demonstrated quantum fingerprinting [3], exploiting phase-modulated weak coherent pulses, provides O(log2n) scaling in the number of used qubits, but needs phase stability between A and B. Here we introduce and analyse a quantum fingerprinting protocol based on two-photon interference which does require a shared phase reference and works in scenarios when the global phase of transmitted signals becomes completely random. Interestingly, the performance of this protocol, quantified in terms of the Chernoff information [4], is enhanced through the use of non-classical single-photon states, even in the regime of high transmission loss.
We present a quantum fingerprinting protocol relying on two-photon interference which does not require a shared phase reference between the parties preparing optical signals carrying data fingerprints. We show that the scaling of the protocol, in terms of transmittable classical information, is analogous to the recently proposed and demonstrated scheme based on coherent pulses and first-order interference, offering comparable advantage over classical fingerprinting protocols without access to shared prior randomness. We analyze the protocol taking into account non-Poissonian photon statistics of optical signals and a variety of imperfections, such as transmission losses, dark counts, and residual distinguishability. The impact of these effects on the protocol performance is quantified with the help of Chernoff information.
When considering the complexity of communication protocols, the aim is to perform a certain task with the minimum amount of communication resources, such as time and transmitted information. The use of quantum states may lead to an exponential advantage in the use of such resources. Here, we are interested in the task of calculating the Euclidean distance between two vectors representing real data sets. It has been previously shown that it is possible to obtain an advantage for this task based on quantum fingerprinting. This protocol is defined in the simultaneous message passing model of communication complexity, where the two parties do not communicate with each other but send data to a third party, and exploits practical fingerprints generated using trains of coherent state pulses instead of highly entangled qubit states that are hard to generate for large input sizes needed to demonstrate an exponential advantage. We perform a proof-of-principle experimental demonstration of the Euclidean distance protocol using amplitude modulation techniques for encoding non-binary data sets and high-performance superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors required to increase the accessible input size. We show a quantum advantage in transmitted information surpassing the best classical protocol for an input size of 108, for diverse types of data sets, including those corresponding to real grayscale images, and with reasonable precision and error bounds. Our results highlight the potential of quantum communication complexity for use in a broad set of applications.
Quantum fingerprinting allows two remote parties to determine whether their datasets are identical or different by sending exponentially less information compared to the classical protocol with equivalent performance. Optical implementations of the quantum protocol based on weak coherent states have been proposed and realized. However, in these realizations phase stability between the sending parties is required. Here we analyze the practical feasibility of the recently introduced quantum fingerprinting protocol based on higher-order interference, which does not require a phase lock between transmitters. We show that an experimental demonstration of a quantum fingerprinting protocol beating the known bound on the performance of classical schemes should be possible using currently available technology.