This thesis focuses on fundamental resources in quantum information theory with continuous variables and their applications to quantum optics and quantum thermodynamics. Our analysis mainly considers Gaussian states of continuous variable systems formed by two, three, or more modes, and adopts a variety of techniques to study their static and dynamical properties. Our original results include three main case studies: (i) quantifying genuine multipartite Bell nonlocality in permutationally invariant Gaussian states; (ii) characterising bipartite Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) steering with non-Gaussian measurements; and (iii) benchmarking the reaction-coordinate mapping in non-equilibrium quantum harmonic chains. In project (i), we investigate genuine multipartite nonlocality of multimode Gaussian states, as detected by the violation of Svetlichny inequality. We consider both displaced parity and pseudospin measurements and identify the largest violation of the inequality on permutationally invariant states. In the pseudospin case, we show that the maximum violation of Svetlichny inequality allowed by quantum mechanics can be approached for asymptotically large squeezing. In project (ii) we study the detection of EPR steering (an asymmetric quantum correlation intermediate between entanglement and Bell nonlocality) in bipartite Gaussian states by pseudospin measurements. Our analysis reveals previously unexplored regimes where non-Gaussian measurements are more effective than Gaussian ones to witness steering of Gaussian states in the presence of local noise. Finally, in project (iii) we analyze the validity of the reaction-coordinate mapping to characterise heat transport in an exactly solvable model: a two-node linear "quantum wire" connecting two baths at different temperatures. We find surprisingly that the stationary state of the original problem can be reproduced accurately by a weak-coupling treatment even in the regime of very strong residual dissipation.
This thesis focuses on fundamental resources in quantum information theory with continuous variables and their applications to quantum optics and quantum thermodynamics. Our analysis mainly considers Gaussian states of continuous variable systems formed by two, three, or more modes, and adopts a variety of techniques to study their static and dynamical properties. Our original results include three main case studies: (i) quantifying genuine multipartite Bell nonlocality in permutationally invariant Gaussian states; (ii) characterising bipartite Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) steering with non-Gaussian measurements; and (iii) benchmarking the reaction-coordinate mapping in non-equilibrium quantum harmonic chains. In project (i), we investigate genuine multipartite nonlocality of multimode Gaussian states, as detected by the violation of Svetlichny inequality. We consider both displaced parity and pseudospin measurements and identify the largest violation of the inequality on permutationally invariant states. In the pseudospin case, we show that the maximum violation of Svetlichny inequality allowed by quantum mechanics can be approached for asymptotically large squeezing. In project (ii) we study the detection of EPR steering (an asymmetric quantum correlation intermediate between entanglement and Bell nonlocality) in bipartite Gaussian states by pseudospin measurements. Our analysis reveals previously unexplored regimes where non-Gaussian measurements are more effective than Gaussian ones to witness steering of Gaussian states in the presence of local noise. Finally, in project (iii) we analyze the validity of the reaction-coordinate mapping to characterise heat transport in an exactly solvable model: a two-node linear "quantum wire" connecting two baths at different temperatures. We find surprisingly that the stationary state of the original problem can be reproduced accurately by a weak-coupling treatment even in the regime of very strong residual dissipation.
Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) steering is an asymmetric form of correlations which is intermediate between quantum entanglement and Bell nonlocality, and can be exploited as a resource for quantum communication with one untrusted party. In particular, steering of continuous-variable Gaussian states has been extensively studied theoretically and experimentally, as a fundamental manifestation of the EPR paradox. While most of these studies focused on quadrature measurements for steering detection, two recent works revealed that there exist Gaussian states which are only steerable by suitable non-Gaussian measurements. In this paper we perform a systematic investigation of EPR steering of bipartite Gaussian states by pseudospin measurements, complementing and extending previous findings. We first derive the density-matrix elements of two-mode squeezed thermal Gaussian states in the Fock basis, which may be of independent interest. We then use such a representation to investigate steering of these states as detected by a simple nonlinear criterion, based on second moments of the correlation matrix constructed from pseudospin operators. This analysis reveals previously unexplored regimes where non-Gaussian measurements are shown to be more effective than Gaussian ones to witness steering of Gaussian states in the presence of local noise. We further consider an alternative set of pseudospin observables, whose expectation value can be expressed more compactly in terms of Wigner functions for all two-mode Gaussian states. However, according to the adopted criterion, these observables are found to be always less sensitive than conventional Gaussian observables for steering detection. Finally, we investigate continuous-variable Werner states, which are non-Gaussian mixtures of Gaussian states, and find that pseudospin measurements are always more effective than Gaussian ones to reveal their steerability. Our results provide useful insights on the role of non-Gaussian measurements in characterizing quantum correlations of Gaussian and non-Gaussian states of continuous-variable quantum systems.
This PhD Dissertation collects results of my own work on the topic of continuous variable (CV) quantum teleportation, which is one of the most important applications of quantum entanglement, as well as on the understanding, quantification, detection, and applications of a type of quantum correlations known as Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) steering, for both bipartite and multipartite systems and with a main focus on CV systems. For the first results, we examine and compare two fundamentally different teleportation schemes; the well-known continuous variable scheme of Vaidman, Braunstein and Kimble, and a recently proposed hybrid scheme by Andersen and Ralph. We analyse the teleportation of ensembles of arbitrary pure single-mode Gaussian states using these schemes and compare their performance against classical strategies that utilize no entanglement (benchmarks). Our analysis brings into question any advantage due to non-Gaussianity for quantum teleportation of Gaussian states. For the second part of the results, we study bipartite EPR-steering. We propose a novel powerful method to detect steering in quantum systems of any dimension in a systematic and hierarchical way. Our method includes previous results of the literature as special cases on one hand, and goes beyond them on the other. We proceed to the quantification of steering-type correlations, and introduce a measure of steering for arbitrary bipartite Gaussian states, prove many useful properties, and provide with an operational interpretation of the proposed measure in terms of the key rate in one-sided device independent quantum key distribution. Finally, we show how the Gaussian steering measure gives a lower bound to a more general quantifier of which Gaussian states are proven to be extremal. We proceed to the study of multipartite steering, and derive laws for the distribution of Gaussian steering among different parties in multipartite Gaussian states. We define an indicator of collective steering-type correlations, which is interpreted operationally in terms of the guaranteed secret key rate in the multi-party cryptographic task of quantum secret sharing. The final results look at the cryptographical task of quantum secret sharing, whose security has remained unproven almost two decades after its original conception. By utilizing intuition and ideas from steering, we manage to establish for the first time an unconditional security proof for CV entanglement-based quantum secret sharing schemes, and demonstrate their practical feasibility. Our results establish quantum secret sharing as a viable and practically relevant primitive for quantum communication technologies.
Quantum networks enable forms of nonlocality beyond the standard Bell scenario, with a multitude of potential applications. Continuous-variable (CV) platforms are particularly attractive for large-scale networks, offering deterministic entanglement generation and favorable prospects for long-distance distribution. Here, we present a formalism to study CV network nonlocality using pseudospin measurements. Considering the linear chain and star configurations, we derive the maximal violations of the corresponding network locality inequalities for arbitrary two-mode states. Using two-mode squeezed vacuum states, we show that the strength of nonlocality in the star configuration remains independent of the network size. Moreover, the nonlocal correlations persist even at arbitrarily high temperatures provided the squeezing exceeds a critical threshold. Further, we demonstrate non-Gaussianity as an enhancer of network nonlocality through illustrations of various classes of non-Gaussian resources. Remarkably, a coherent superposition of single-photon subtractions across modes achieves maximal violation for arbitrarily small squeezing. Finally, we provide schematics of an experimentally feasible implementation of CV network nonlocality based on the isomorphism between pseudospin and spatial parity observables.
We investigate genuine multipartite nonlocality of pure permutationally invariant multimode Gaussian states of continuous variable systems, as detected by the violation of Svetlichny inequality. We identify the phase space settings leading to the largest violation of the inequality when using displaced parity measurements, distinguishing our results between the cases of even and odd total number of modes. We further consider pseudospin measurements and show that, for three-mode states with asymptotically large squeezing degree, particular settings of these measurements allow one to approach the maximum violation of Svetlichny inequality allowed by quantum mechanics. This indicates that the strongest manifestation of genuine multipartite quantum nonlocality is in principle verifiable on Gaussian states.
Certification and quantification of correlations for multipartite states of quantum systems appear to be a central task in quantum information theory. We give here a unitary quantum-mechanical perspective of both entanglement and Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) steering of continuous-variable multimode states. This originates in the Heisenberg uncertainty relations for the canonical quadrature operators of the modes. Correlations of two-party (Nvs1)-mode states are examined by using the variances of a pair of suitable EPR-like observables. It turns out that the uncertainty sum of these nonlocal variables is bounded from below by local uncertainties and is strengthened differently for separable states and for each one-way unsteerable state. The analysis of the minimal properly normalized sums of these variances yields necessary conditions of separability and EPR unsteerability of (Nvs1)-mode states in both possible ways of steering. When the states and the performed measurements are Gaussian, then these conditions are precisely the previously known criteria of separability and one-way unsteerability.
We investigate the genuine multipartite nonlocality of three-mode Gaussian states of continuous variable systems. For pure states, we present a simplified procedure to obtain the maximum violation of the Svetlichny inequality based on displaced parity measurements, and we analyze its interplay with genuine tripartite entanglement measured via Rényi-2 entropy. The maximum Svetlichny violation admits tight upper and lower bounds at fixed tripartite entanglement. For mixed states, no violation is possible when the purity falls below 0.86. We also explore a set of recently derived weaker inequalities for three-way nonlocality, finding violations for all tested pure states. Our results provide a strong signature for the nonclassical and nonlocal nature of Gaussian states despite their positive Wigner function, and lead to precise recipes for its experimental verification.