The possibility of cloning a
d-dimensional quantum system without an ancilla is explored, extending on the economical phase-covariant cloning machine for qubits found in Phys. Rev. A 60, 2764 (1999). We prove the impossibility of constructing an economical version of the optimal universal $1\ensuremath{\rightarrow}2$ cloning machine in any dimension. We also show, using an ansatz on the generic form of cloning machines, that the
d-dimensional $1\ensuremath{\rightarrow}2$ phase-covariant cloner, which optimally clones all balanced superpositions with arbitrary phases, can be realized economically only in dimension
d=2. The used ansatz is supported by numerical evidence up to
d=7. An economical phase-covariant cloner can nevertheless be constructed for
d>2, albeit with a slightly lower fidelity than that of the optimal cloner requiring an ancilla. Finally, using again an ansatz on cloning machines, we show that an economical version of the $1\ensuremath{\rightarrow}2$ Fourier-covariant cloner, which optimally clones the computational basis and its Fourier transform, is also possible only in dimension
d=2.
We describe a unified framework of phase-covariant multiuser quantum transformations for d-dimensional quantum systems. We derive the optimal phase-covariant cloning and transposition transformations for multiphase states. We show that for some particular relations between the input and output number of copies, they correspond to economical transformations, which can be achieved without the need of auxiliary systems. We prove a relation between the optimal phase-covariant cloning and transposition maps and optimal estimation of multiple phases for equatorial states.
We consider cloning transformations of equatorial qubits $|{\ensuremath{\psi}}_{\ensuremath{\varphi}}〉=1/\sqrt{2}(|0〉{+e}^{i\ensuremath{\varphi}}|1〉)$ and qutrits $|{\ensuremath{\psi}}_{\ensuremath{\varphi},\ensuremath{\theta}}〉=1/\sqrt{3}(|0〉{+e}^{i\ensuremath{\varphi}}|1〉{+e}^{i\ensuremath{\theta}}|2〉),$ with the transformation covariant for rotation of the phases $\ensuremath{\varphi}$ and $\ensuremath{\theta}.$ The optimal cloning maps are derived without simplifying assumptions from first principles, for any number of input and output qubits, and for a single-input qutrit and any number of output qutrits. We also compare the cloning maps for global and single-particle fidelities, and we show that the two criteria lead to different optimal maps.
After the appearance of the no-cloning theorem, approximate quantum cloning machines (QCMs) has become a well-studied subject in quantum information theory. Among several measures to quantify the performance of a QCM, single-qudit fidelity and global fidelity have been most widely used. In this paper we compute the optimal global fidelity for phase-covariant cloning machines via semidefinite programming optimization, thereby completing a remaining gap in the previous results on QCMs. We also consider optimal simulations of the cloning and transpose cloning map, both by a direct optimization and by a composition of component-wise optimal QCMs. For the cloning map the composition method is suboptimal whereas for the transpose cloning map the method is asymptotically optimal.
We experimentally realize the $1\ensuremath{\rightarrow}2$ optimal universal quantum cloning machine for arbitrary qubits and the ancilla-free $1\ensuremath{\rightarrow}3$ optimal phase-covariant quantum cloning machine for $x\text{\ensuremath{-}}y$ equatorial qubits, which were constructed by Zou et al. [Phys. Lett. A 366, 36 (2007)]. The qubits are represented by the polarization states of photons prepared from the process of spontaneous parametric down-conversion. The copies of each machine are shown to have almost equal fidelities conditioned on fourfold coincidences.