Quantum Physics

The measurement of the position-momentum EPR correlations of a two-photon state is important for many quantum information applications ranging from quantum key distribution to coincidence imaging. However, all the existing techniques for measuring the position-momentum EPR correlations involve coincidence detection and thus suffer from issues that result in less accurate measurements. In this letter, we propose and demonstrate an experimental scheme that does not require coincidence detection for measuring the EPR correlations. Our technique works for two-photon states that are pure, irrespective of whether the state is separable or entangled. We theoretically show that if the pure two-photon state satisfies a certain set of conditions then the position-momentum EPR correlations can be obtained by doing the intensity measurements on only one of the photons. We experimentally demonstrate this technique for pure two-photon states produced by type-I spontaneous parametric down-conversion, and to the best of our knowledge, we report the most accurate measurement of position-momentum EPR correlations so far.

Despite the increasing interest, the research field which studies the concepts of work and heat at quantum level has suffered from two main drawbacks: first, the difficulty to properly define and measure the work, heat and internal energy variation in a quantum system and, second, the lack of experiments. Here, we report for the first time the full experimental characterization of the dissipated heat, work and internal energy variation in a two-level quantum system interacting with an engineered environment. We use the IBMQ quantum computer to implement the driven system's dynamics in a dissipative environment. The experimental data allow us to construct quasi-probability distribution functions from which we recover the correct averages of work, heat and internal energy variation in the dissipative processes. Interestingly, by increasing the environment coupling strength, we observe a reduction of the pure quantum features of the energy exchange processes that we interpret as the emergence of the classical limit. This makes the present approach a privileged tool to study, understand and exploit quantum effects in energy exchanges.

This is a brief report on a particular use of measurement-based uncomputation. Though not appealing in performance, it may shed light on optimization techniques in various quantum circuits.

Quantum key distribution (QKD) employed orbital angular momentum (OAM) for high-dimensional encoding enhances the system security and information capacity between two communication parties. However, such advantages significantly degrade because of the fragility of OAM states in atmospheric turbulence. Unlike previous researches, we first investigate the performance degradation of OAM-based QKD by infinitely long phase screen (ILPS), which offers a feasible way to study how adaptive optics (AO) dynamically corrects the turbulence-induced aberrations in real time. Secondly, considering the failure of AO while encountering phase cuts, we evaluate the quality enhancement of OAM-based QKD under moderate turbulence strengths by AO after implementing the wrapped cuts elimination. Finally, we simulate that, with more realistic considerations, real-time AO can still mitigate the impact of atmospheric turbulence on OAM-based QKD even in the large wind velocity regime.

Reliable methods for the classification and quantification of quantum entanglement are fundamental to understanding its exploitation in quantum technologies. One such method, known as Separable Neural Network Quantum States (SNNS), employs a neural network inspired parameterisation of quantum states whose entanglement properties are explicitly programmable. Combined with generative machine learning methods, this ansatz allows for the study of very specific forms of entanglement which can be used to infer/measure entanglement properties of target quantum states. In this work, we extend the use of SNNS to mixed, multipartite states, providing a versatile and efficient tool for the investigation of intricately entangled quantum systems. We illustrate the effectiveness of our method through a number of examples, such as the computation of novel tripartite entanglement measures, and the approximation of ultimate upper bounds for qudit channel capacities.

Wheeler's delayed-choice experiment delays the decision to observe either the wave or particle behavior of a photon until after it has entered the interferometer, and the quantum delayed-choice experiment provides the possibility of observing the wave and particle behavior simultaneously by introducing quantum control device. We here propose a modified quantum delayed-choice experiment without quantum control or entanglement assistance, in which a photon can be prepared in a wave-particle superposition state and the morphing behavior of wave-to-particle transition can be observed easily. It is demonstrated that the presented scheme can allow us to rule out classical hidden variable models in a device-independent manner via violating dimension witness. We also extend the scheme to the situation of two degrees of freedom, first constructing a hybrid quantum delayed-choice experiment which enables simultaneous observation of a photon's wave and particle behaviors in different degrees of freedom, and then proposing a scheme to prepare the single-photon wave-particle entanglement. This study is not only meaningful to explore the wave and particle properties of photons, but also provides potential for the research of the single-particle nonlocality from the perspective of the wave-particle degree of freedom.

The two essential ideas in this paper are, on the one hand, that a considerable amount of the power of quantum computation may be obtained by adding to a classical computer a few specialized quantum modules and, on the other hand, that such modules may be constructed out of classical systems obeying quantum-like equations where a space coordinate is the evolution parameter (thus playing the role of time in the quantum algorithms).

The relative motion of three impenetrable particles on a ring, in our case two identical fermions and one impurity, is isomorphic to a triangular quantum billiard. Depending on the ratio κ of the impurity and fermion masses, the billiards can be integrable or non-integrable (also referred to in the main text as chaotic). To set the stage, we first investigate the energy level distributions of the billiards as a function of 1/κ?�[0,1] and find no evidence of integrable cases beyond the limiting values 1/κ=1 and 1/κ=0 . Then, we use machine learning tools to analyze properties of probability distributions of individual quantum states. We find that convolutional neural networks can correctly classify integrable and non-integrable states. The decisive features of the wave functions are the normalization and a large number of zero elements, corresponding to the existence of a nodal line. The network achieves typical accuracies of 97\%,suggesting that machine learning tools can be used to analyze and classify the morphology of probability densities obtained in theory and experiment.

In this paper we discuss the Morse potential on a quantum computer. The Morse potential is useful to describe diatomic molecules and has a finite number of bound states which can be measured through spectroscopy. It is also a example of an exactly soluble potential using supersymmetric quantum mechanics. Using the the supersymmetric quantum mechanics formalism one can derive a heirachy of Hamiltonians such that the ground state of the next rung on the heirarchy yeids the first excited state of the hamiltonian below it. Using this method one can determine all the states of the Morse potential by calculating all the ground states of the sequence of Hamiltonians in the heirarchy. We use the IBM QISKit software together with the Variational Quantum Eiegensolver (VQE) algorithm to calculate the ground state and first excited state energy of the Morse potential and find agreement with the exact expression for the bound state energies of the Morse Potential. We analyze different optimizers to study the numerical effect on the calculations. Finally we perform quantum computations for diatomic and triatomic molecules to illustrate the application of these techniques on near term quantum computers and find excellent agreement with experimental data.

Phase-sensitive optical parametric amplification of squeezed states helps to overcome detection loss and noise and thus increase the robustness of sub-shot-noise sensing. Because such techniques, e.g., imaging and spectroscopy, operate with multimode light, multimode amplification is required. Here we find the optimal methods for multimode phase-sensitive amplification and verify them in an experiment where a pumped second-order nonlinear crystal is seeded with a Gaussian coherent beam. Phase-sensitive amplification is obtained by tightly focusing the seed into the crystal, rather than seeding with close-to-plane waves. This suggests that phase-sensitive amplification of sub-shot-noise images should be performed in the near field. Similar recipe can be formulated for the time and frequency, which makes this work relevant for quantum-enhanced spectroscopy.