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arXiv:quant-ph/0405082 · Physical Review A

Quantum reverse engineering and reference-frame alignment without nonlocal correlations

E. Bagán, M. Baig, R. Muñoz-Tapia

Published Sep 7, 2004• 64 citations
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Abstract

The estimation of unknown qubit elementary gates and the alignment of reference frames are formally the same problem. Using quantum states made out of $N$ qubits, we show that the theoretical precision limit for both problems, which behaves as $1∕{N}^{2}$, can be asymptotically attained with a covariant protocol that exploits the quantum correlation of internal degrees of freedom instead of the more fragile entanglement between distant parties. This cuts by half the number of qubits needed to achieve the precision of the dense covariant coding protocol.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.70.030301

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The estimation of unknown qubit elementary gates and the alignment of reference frames are formally the same problem. Using quantum states made out of NNN qubits, we show that the theoretical precision limit for both problems, which behaves as 1∕N21∕{N}^{2}1∕N2, can be asymptotically attained with a covariant protocol that exploits the quantum correlation of internal degrees of freedom instead of the more fragile entanglement between distant parties. This cuts by half the number of qubits needed to achieve the precision of the dense covariant coding protocol.
Quantum experiments usually assume the existence of perfect, classical reference frames (RFs), which allow for the specification of measurement settings (e.g. orientation of the Stern-Gerlach magnet in spin measurements) with arbitrary precision. If the RFs are 'bounded' (i.e. quantum systems themselves, having a finite number of degrees of freedom), only limited precision can be attained. Using spin coherent states as bounded RFs, we have found the minimum size needed for them to violate local realism for entangled spin systems. For composite systems of spin particles, RFs of very small size are sufficient for the violation; however, to see this violation for macroscopic entangled spins, the size of the RF must be at least quadratically larger than that of the spins. The unavailability of such RFs gives a possible explanation for the non-observance of violation of local realism in everyday experience.
We present a procedure inspired by dense coding, which enables a highly efficient transmission of information of a continuous nature. The procedure requires the sender and the recipient to share a maximally entangled state. We deal with the concrete problem of aligning reference frames or trihedra by means of a quantum system. We find the optimal covariant measurement and compute the corresponding average error, which has a remarkably simple close form. The connection of this procedure with that of estimating unitary transformations on qubits is briefly discussed.
Recently, there has been much interest in a new kind of ``unspeakable'' quantum information that stands to regular quantum information in the same way that a direction in space or a moment in time stands to a classical bit string: the former can only be encoded using particular degrees of freedom while the latter are indifferent to the physical nature of the information carriers. The problem of correlating distant reference frames, of which aligning Cartesian axes and synchronizing clocks are important instances, is an example of a task that requires the exchange of unspeakable information and for which it is interesting to determine the fundamental quantum limit of efficiency. There have also been many investigations into the information theory that is appropriate for parties that lack reference frames or that lack correlation between their reference frames, restrictions that result in global and local superselection rules. In the presence of these, quantum unspeakable information becomes a new kind of resource that can be manipulated, depleted, quantified, etc. Methods have also been developed to contend with these restrictions using relational encodings, particularly in the context of computation, cryptography, communication, and the manipulation of entanglement. This paper reviews the role of reference frames and superselection rules in the theory of quantum-information processing.
Armed with quantum correlations, quantum sensors in a network have shown the potential to outclass their classical counterparts in distributed sensing tasks such as clock synchronization and reference frame alignment. On the other hand, this analysis was done for simple and idealized networks, whereas the correlation shared within a practical quantum network, captured by the notion of network states, is much more complex. Here, we prove a general bound that limits the performance of using quantum network states to estimate a global parameter, establishing the necessity of genuine multipartite entanglement for achieving a quantum advantage. The bound can also serve as an entanglement witness in networks and can be generalized to states generated by shallow circuits. Moreover, while our bound prohibits local network states from achieving the Heisenberg limit, we design a probabilistic protocol that, once successful, attains this ultimate limit of quantum metrology and preserves the privacy of involved parties. Our work establishes both the limitation and the possibility of quantum metrology within quantum networks.