Quantum information protocol with quantum resources shows a great advantage in substantially improving security, fidelity, and capacity of information processing. Various quantum information protocols with diverse functionalities have been proposed and implemented. However, in general, the present quantum information system can only carry out a single information protocol or deal with a single communication task, which limits its practical application in the future. Therefore, it is essential to develop a multifunctional platform compatible with multiple different quantum information protocols. In this Letter, by utilizing an all-optical platform consisting of a gain-tunable parametric amplifier, a beam splitter, and an entanglement source, we experimentally realize the partially disembodied quantum state transfer protocol, which links the all-optical quantum teleportation protocol and the optimal 1→N coherent state cloning protocol. As a result, these three protocols, which have different physical essences and functionalities, are implemented in a single all-optical machine. In particular, we demonstrate that the partially disembodied quantum state transfer protocol can enhance the state transfer fidelity compared with all-optical quantum teleportation under the same strength of entanglement. Our all-optical quantum state transfer machine paves a way to implement the multifunctional quantum information system.
Quantum information protocol with quantum resources shows a great advantage in substantially improving security, fidelity, and capacity of information processing. Various quantum information protocols with diverse functionalities have been proposed and implemented. However, in general, the present quantum information system can only carry out a single information protocol or deal with a single communication task, which limits its practical application in the future. Therefore, it is essential to develop a multifunctional platform compatible with multiple different quantum information protocols. In this Letter, by utilizing an all-optical platform consisting of a gain-tunable parametric amplifier, a beam splitter, and an entanglement source, we experimentally realize the partially disembodied quantum state transfer protocol, which links the all-optical quantum teleportation protocol and the optimal 1→N coherent state cloning protocol. As a result, these three protocols, which have different physical essences and functionalities, are implemented in a single all-optical machine. In particular, we demonstrate that the partially disembodied quantum state transfer protocol can enhance the state transfer fidelity compared with all-optical quantum teleportation under the same strength of entanglement. Our all-optical quantum state transfer machine paves a way to implement the multifunctional quantum information system.
We propose a new protocol of implementing continuous-variable quantum state transfer using partially disembodied transport. This protocol may improve the fidelity at the expense of the introduction of a semiquantum channel between the parties, in comparison with quantum teleportation using the same strength of entanglement. Depending on the amount of information destroyed in the measurement, this protocol may be regarded as a teleportation protocol (complete destruction of input state), or as a cloning protocol (partial destruction), or as a direct transmission (no destruction). This scheme can be straightforwardly implemented with a setup that is at present experimentally accessible.
Quantum teleportation is one of the most basic quantum protocols, which transfers an unknown quantum state from one location to another through local operation and classical communication by using shared quantum entanglement without physical transfer of the information carrier. And it has been widely used in various quantum information protocols such as entanglement swapping, quantum repeaters, quantum gate teleportation, quantum computation based on measurement, and quantum teleportation networks, which have important application value in quantum computation and quantum information. Quantum teleportation is a naturally bipartite process, in which an unknown quantum state can only be transmitted from one node to another. With the further development of quantum information research, it is necessary to transfer quantum states or quantum information among more and more nodes. Multipartite quantum protocols are expected to form fundamental components for larger-scale quantum communication and computation. A bipartite quantum teleportation should be extended to a multipartite protocol known as a quantum teleportation network. In this paper, a multifunctional quantum teleportation network is proposed theoretically. We first propose a special method of constructing four-partite quantum resources in continuous variables (CVs), and based on this, construct two different types of CV quantum teleportation networks. One type of network contains just one quantum teleportation process consisting of a sender, a receiver and two controllers. In this type of network, the unknown quantum state can be recovered at any other node according to the requirement after the measurement in the input node, which enriches the transfer direction and transfer mode of the unknown quantum state. And meanwhile, the two controllers can control the transfer of a quantum state from the sender to the receiver by restricting the sender and receiver’s access to their information, which makes the quantum teleportation network controllable. The other type of network has two quantum teleportation processes, each containing only a sender, a receiver and no controllers, which increases the number of quantum states that can be transmitted. Then we analyze the dependence of the fidelity of each quantum teleportation network on different physical parameters, and compare the characteristics, advantages and disadvantages among different types of quantum teleportation networks. The scheme for constructing a multifunctional quantum teleportation network in this paper shows some advantages, such as the greater number of quantum nodes, diversity of types, simple operation procedure. And all these advantages provide a broader application prospect for establishing larger and more complex quantum information networks in the future and quicken the pace of the application of quantum information.
An unknown quantum state is prohibited from perfect cloning due to the principles of quantum mechanics, while approximate cloning of an unknown quantum state can be achieved by constructing quantum cloning machines. In the continuous variable regime, to effectively improve the cloning fidelity, an N + N ′ → M + M ′ phase-conjugate inputs (PCI) quantum cloning scheme is proposed based on an optical parametric amplifier and beam splitter network. However, due to the difficulties in constructing an optical parametric amplifier approaching the quantum noise limit, such quantum cloning scheme has not been experimentally realized. In this work, we present all-optical N + N ′ → M + M ′ PCI quantum cloning of coherent states by utilizing a phase-sensitive amplifier based on a four-wave mixing process. In particular, we experimentally realize deterministic all-optical 1+1→ M + M ′ ( M = M ′ =2, 4) and 2+2→ M + M ′ ( M = M ′ =3, 4, 6, 8) PCI quantum cloning. The maximum cloning fidelities experimentally achieved are 96.76 % ±0.57 % and 96.80 % ±0.58 % in the 2+2→3+3 case, which are the maximum cloning fidelities in deterministic continuous variable quantum cloning, to our knowledge. Our results provide an effective scheme for enhancing cloning fidelity and can find applications in achieving high-fidelity quantum information protocols.
The laws of quantum mechanics forbid the perfect copying of an unknown quantum state, known as the no-cloning theorem. In spite of this, approximate cloning with imperfect fidelity is possible, which opens up the field of quantum cloning. In general, quantum cloning can be divided into discrete variable and continuous variable (CV) categories. In the CV regime, all-optical implementation of the optimal N→M quantum cloning has been proposed in two original parallel works, which involves a parametric amplifier and a set of beam splitters and thus avoids the optic-electro and electro-optic conversions in the current CV quantum cloning technologies. However, such original proposal of all-optical CV optimal N→M quantum cloning scheme has never been experimentally implemented. Here, we show that optimal N→M quantum cloning of coherent states can be realized by utilizing a parametric amplifier based on four-wave mixing process in a hot atomic vapor and a set of beam splitters. In particular, we realize 1→M, 2→M, and 4→M quantum cloning. We find that the fidelity of N→M quantum cloning increases with the decrease of clone number M and the increase of original replica number N. The best cloning fidelity achieved in our experiment is about 93.3% ±1.0% in the 4→5 case. Our results may find potential applications in realizing all-optical high-fidelity quantum state transfer and all-optical high-compatibility eavesdropping attack in quantum communication networks.
We present the first experimental implementation of a multifunctional device for the optimal cloning of one to two qubits. Previous implementations have always been designed to optimize the cloning procedure with respect to one single type of a priori information about the cloned state. In contrast, our ``all-in-one'' implementation is optimal for several prominent regimes such as universal cloning, phase-covariant cloning, and also the first ever realized mirror phase-covariant cloning, when the square of the expected value of Pauli's Z operator is known in advance. In all these regimes the experimental device yields clones with almost maximum achievable average fidelity (97.5 of theoretical limit). Our device has a wide range of possible applications in quantum information processing, especially in quantum communication. For instance, one can use it for incoherent and coherent attacks against a variety of cryptographic protocols, including the Bennett-Brassard 1984 protocol of quantum key distribution through the Pauli damping channels. It can be also applied as a state-dependent photon multiplier in practical quantum networks.
Quantum entanglement is a fundamental resource for quantum information processing and is widely used in quantum communication, quantum computation and quantum metrology. Early research on quantum entanglement mainly focus on qubit states, but in recent years, more and more research has begun to focus on high-dimensional entangled states. Compared with qubit entangled states, higher-dimensional entangled states have a larger information capacity and the potential to realize more complex quantum applications. In this Letter, we have experimentally prepared a special high-dimensional entangled state, the so-called three-photon asymmetric maximally entangled state, which consists of two two-dimensional photons and one four-dimensional photon. Using this asymmetric maximally entangled state as a resource, we have also implemented a proof-of-principle quantum teleportation experiment, realizing the transfer of quantum information from two qubits to a single ququart. The fidelities of the quantum teleportation range from 0.79 to 0.86, which are well above both the optimal single-copy ququart state-estimation limit of 2/5 and maximal qutrit-ququart overlap of 3/4, thus confirming a genuine and nonclassical four-dimensional teleportation. The asymmetric entangled state realized here has the potential to be used as a quantum interface in future quantum networks, allowing quantum information transfer between quantum objects of different dimensions via the quantum teleportation protocol demonstrated in this work.