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Physical Review A

Experimental quantum cloning in a pseudo-unitary system

Xiang Zhan, Kunkun Wang, Lei Xiao, Zhihao Bian, Yongsheng Zhang, Barry C. Sanders, Chengjie Zhang, Peng Xue

Published Jan 17, 2020• 30 citations

Abstract

Deterministically cloning (copying) nonorthogonal states is forbidden in quantum mechanics, but deterministic pseudo-unitary cloning is possible in a nonunitary system. We prove and show that, for any two nonorthogonal qubit states, we can find a linear, invertible Hermitian (metric) operator to make these states mutually orthogonal with respect to the corresponding pseudo-inner product. From this metric operator, we construct a pseudo-Hermitian Hamiltonian and its evolution operator as an ideal, deterministic pseudo-unitary cloner. For applicability, suppose Alice lives in our ordinary universe and Bob lives in a universe that has the desired pseudo-unitary evolution. Alice would send her nonorthogonal states to Bob and Bob would do the cloning deterministically and send back to Alice. The quantum channel will be lossy not due to Bob's universe's properties, but rather due to problems making a channel between the two universes. We experimentally demonstrate deterministic pseudo-unitary two-qubit cloning for a photonic pseudo-unitary two-qubit system. In our universe we have to demonstrate that universe by executing a postselected gate that effects loss-based pseudo-unitary evolution. Furthermore, we introduce an algorithmic method for designing experimental realizations of a generic class of nonunitary operators for pseudo-unitary cloning.

DOI: 10.1103/physreva.101.010302

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We show that using a fixed cloning machine, whether deterministic inexact or probabilistic exact, one can take an arbitrary blank state. Quantum information cannot be cloned. There cannot exist a machine which can produce two (or more) exact copies of an arbitrary state in a deterministic manner [1]. Replication is not allowed even when the input state is taken at random from a given set of two non-orthogonal states [2]. It has been further shown that probabilistic cloning is not possible if the input state is from a given linearly dependent set [3]. Henceforth we deal explicitly with qubits although all the results can be extended to higher dimensions. Although exact cloning is not possible, one can approximately clone an arbitrary input state [4, 5, 6]. In this scheme a fixed state is taken as the blank state, depending on which and the initial machine state, the cloning operation is constructed. We extend this operation such that any arbitrary (pure or mixed) state taken as the blank copy can do the job. The optimal universal 1 → 2 inexact qubit cloner of Brußet al.[5] takes an arbitrary qubit |ψ 〉 〈ψ | = 1 2 (I + − → s. − → σ) along with a fixed blank qubit |b 〉 and a machine state |M 〉 as input. An entangled state of the three qubits is produced as the output such that the reduced density matrices of the first two qubits are two similar approximate copies ρ = 1 2 (I + η− → s. − → σ) of |ψ 〉 〈ψ | with η = 2 3. The unitary operator realizing this process is defined on the combined Hilbert space of the input qubit, the blank qubit and machine by U ′ √ √

We establish the best possible approximation to a perfect quantum cloning machine that produces two clones out of a single input. We analyze both universal and state-dependent cloners. The maximal fidelity of cloning is shown to be 5/6 for universal cloners. It can be achieved either by a special unitary evolution or by a teleportation scheme. We construct the optimal state-dependent cloners operating on any prescribed two nonorthogonal states and discuss their fidelities and the use of auxiliary physical resources in the process of cloning. The optimal universal cloners permit us to derive an upper bound on the quantum capacity of the depolarizing quantum channel.

Two known nonorthogonal quantum states can be cloned either deterministically or probabilistically. In this paper, we investigate quantum cloning by combining these two extreme cases, i.e., a trade-off between the copy fidelity and the success probability. For a special set of two known nonorthogonal quantum states, we start with an explicit unitary transformation and derive the copy fidelity as a function of the success probability. The result shows that the higher is the copy fidelity, the less is the success probability. This quantum cloning may have important applications in quantum cryptography.