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Oxford University Press eBooks

Optical Communication with Invisible Photons

Muhammad Suhail Zubairy

Published May 7, 2020• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

It has always been a self-evident and obvious feature of any kind of communication that there should be an exchange of objects like photons or electrons between the sender and the receiver to convey any information. In this chapter a protocol is presented in which information is transmitted between a sender and receiver with no particles in the transmission channel. The basic building block of this counterfactual communication protocol, the Mach–Zehnder interferometer, is discussed. The concept of interaction-free measurement is also introduced.

DOI
10.1093/oso/9780198854227.003.0014

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It has always been a self-evident and obvious feature of any kind of communication that there should be an exchange of objects like photons or electrons between the sender and the receiver to convey any information. In this chapter a protocol is presented in which information is transmitted between a sender and receiver with no particles in the transmission channel. The basic building block of this counterfactual communication protocol, the Mach–Zehnder interferometer, is discussed. The concept of interaction-free measurement is also introduced.
The direct counterfactual quantum-communication protocol involving double-chained Mach-Zehnder interferometers requires a single-photon input. Here, we show that even with multiphoton light sources, including a strong coherent light source as input, the counterfactual communication can be achieved with success probability approaching unity in the ideal asymptotic limit. The path evolution of multiple photons is nonlocally controlled. Thus, information is transmitted without any photons, or any other auxiliary information carriers, appearing in the public transmission channel. The effect is quantum since quantum measurements are an essential requirement for this protocol. Furthermore, a modified scheme is proposed in which the number of interferometers is reduced.
The possibility to communicate between spatially separated regions, without even a single photon passing between the two parties, is an amazing quantum phenomenon. The possibility of transmitting one value of a bit in such a way, the interaction-free measurement, has been known for quarter of a century. The protocols of full communication, including transmitting unknown quantum states, were proposed only a few years ago, but it was shown that in all these protocols the particle was leaving a weak trace in the transmission channel, the trace being larger than the trace left by a single particle passing through the channel. This made the claim of counterfactuality of these protocols at best controversial. However, a simple modification of these recent protocols eliminates the trace in the transmission channel, making all these protocols counterfactual.
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.
Counterfactual communication, i.e., a communication without particles traveling in the transmission channel, is a bizarre quantum effect. Starting from interaction-free measurements many protocols achieving various tasks from counterfactual cryptography to counterfactual transfer of quantum states were proposed and implemented in experiments. However, the meaning of conterfactuality in various protocols remains a controversial topic. A simple error-free counterfactual protocol is proposed. This protocol and its modification are used as a test bed for analysis of the meaning of counterfactuality to clarify the counterfactuality status of various counterfactual proposals.
Possible paths of a photon passing through a nested Mach-Zehnder interferometer on its way to a detector are analyzed using the consistent histories formulation of quantum mechanics, and confirmed using a set of weak measurements (but not weak values). The results disagree with an analysis by Vaidman [Phys. Rev. A 87, 052104 (2013)], and agree with a conclusion reached by Li et al. [Phys. Rev. A 88, 046102 (2013)]. However, the analysis casts serious doubt on the claim of Salih et al. (whose authorship includes Li et al.) [Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 170502 (2013)] to have constructed a protocol for counterfactual communication: a channel which can transmit information even though it contains a negligible number of photons.
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.