Helen Chrzanowski

Measurement-based noiseless linear amplification for quantum communication

Entanglement distillation is an indispensable ingredient in extended quantum communication networks. Distillation protocols are necessarily non-deterministic and require non-trivial experimental techniques such as noiseless amplification. We show that noiseless amplification could be achieved by performing a post-selective filtering of measurement outcomes. We termed this protocol measurement-based noiseless linear amplification (MBNLA). We apply this protocol to entanglement that suffers transmission loss of up to the equivalent of 100km of optical fibre and show that it is capable of distilling entanglement to a level stronger than that achievable by transmitting a maximally entangled state through the same channel. We also provide a proof-of-principle demonstration of secret key extraction from an otherwise insecure regime via MBNLA. Compared to its physical counterpart, MBNLA not only is easier in term of implementation, but also allows one to achieve near optimal probability of success.

A scalable, self-analyzing digital locking system for use on quantum optics experiments.

Digital control of optics experiments has many advantages over analog control systems, specifically in terms of the scalability, cost, flexibility, and the integration of system information into one location. We present a digital control system, freely available for download online, specifically designed for quantum optics experiments that allows for automatic and sequential re-locking of optical components. We show how the inbuilt locking analysis tools, including a white-noise network analyzer, can be used to help optimize individual locks, and verify the long term stability of the digital system. Finally, we present an example of the benefits of digital locking for quantum optics by applying the code to a specific experiment used to characterize optical Schrödinger cat states.

Experimental verification of quantum discord in continuous-variable states

We introduce a simple and efficient technique to verify quantum discord in unknown Gaussian states and certain class of non-Gaussian states. We show that any separation in the peaks of the marginal distributions of one subsystem conditioned on two different outcomes of homodyne measurements performed on the other subsystem indicates correlation between the corresponding quadratures and hence nonzero quantum discord. We also demonstrate that under certain measurement constraints, discord between bipartite systems can be consumed to encode information that can only be accessed by coherent quantum interaction.

Demonstrating various quantum effects with two entangled laser beams

AbstractWe report on the preparation of entangled two mode squeezed states of yet unseen quality. Based on a measurement of the covariance matrix we found a violation of the Reid and Drummond EPR-criterion at a value of only 0.36 ± 0.03 compared to the threshold of 1. Furthermore, quantum state tomography was used to extract a single photon Fock state solely based on homodyne detection, demonstrating the strong quantum features of this pair of laser-beams. The probability for a single photon in this ensemble measurement exceeded 2/3.

Gaussian optical Ising machines

It has recently been shown that optical parametric oscillator (OPO) Ising machines, consisting of coupled optical pulses circulating in a cavity with parametric gain, can be used to probabilistically find low-energy states of Ising spin systems. In this work, we study optical Ising machines that operate under simplified Gaussian dynamics. We show that these dynamics are sufficient for reaching probabilities of success comparable to previous work. Based on this result, we propose modified optical Ising machines with simpler designs that do not use parametric gain yet achieve similar performance, thus suggesting a route to building much larger systems.

Discord as a consumable resource

Quantum discord is conjectured to be a more general quantum resource than entanglement. We support this conjecture by showing, via experimental Gaussian optics, that quantum processors can harness discord to perform tasks classical counterparts cannot.

Operational Signicance of Discord Consumption: Theory and Experiment

Department of Physics, National University of Singapore, Singapore(Dated: December 21, 2013)Coherent interactions that generate negligible entanglement can still exhibit unique quantumbehaviour. This observation has motivated a search beyond entanglement for a complete descriptionof all quantum correlations. Quantum discord is a promising candidate [5, 6]. Here, we demonstratethat under certain measurement constraints, discord between bipartite systems can be consumedto encode information that can only be accessed by coherent quantum interactions. The inabilityto access this information by any other means allows us to use discord to directly quantify this‘quantum advantage’. We experimentally encode information within the discordant correlations oftwo separable Gaussian states. The amount of extra information recovered by coherent interactionis quanti ed and directly linked with the discord consumed during encoding. No entanglement existsat any point of this experiment. Thus we introduce and demonstrate an operational method to usediscord as a physical resource.Entanglement is not the only type of quantum correlation. Quantum discord is a broader measure of such non-classical interactions. An experimental investigation now shows how quantum discord can be consumed to encode information, even in the absence of entanglement.

Reconstruction of photon number conditioned states using phase randomized homodyne measurements

We experimentally demonstrate the reconstruction of a photon number conditioned state without using a photon number discriminating detector. By using only phase randomized homodyne measurements, we reconstruct up to the three photon subtracted squeezed vacuum state. The reconstructed Wigner functions of these states show regions of pronounced negativity, signifying the non-classical nature of the reconstructed states. The techniques presented allow for complete characterization of the role of a conditional measurement on an ensemble of states, and might prove useful in systems where photon counting still proves technically challenging.

Discord as a quantum resource for bi-partite communication

Coherent interactions that generate negligible entanglement can still exhibit unique quantum behaviour. This observation has motivated a search beyond entanglement for a complete description of all quantum correlations. Quantum discord is a promising candidate. Here, we experimentally demonstrate that under certain measurement constraints, discord between bipartite systems can be consumed to encode information that can only be accessed by coherent quantum interactions. The inability to access this information by any other means allows us to use discord to directly quantify this ‘quantum advantage’.

Virtual noiseless amplification

The unavoidable addition of noise during amplification is a well known signature of quantum mechanics. It is at the heart of fundamental results such as the no-cloning theorem, quantum limited metrology, quantum key distribution and the impossibility of increasing entanglement by local operations. Nonetheless one can still avoid the unavoidable by moving to a non-deterministic protocol. This novel concept and a linear optics implementation have been proposed [1] and experimentally realised for the case of amplifying coherent states [2-4], qubits [5,6] and the concentration of phase information [7]. All these were extremely challenging experiments, with only [2] demonstrating entanglement distillation and none directly showing the EPR distillation necessary for application to CV QKD. Furthermore the success probability of these experiments was substantially worse than the theoretical considerations would imply. However as has been noted in [8,9] it is possible to virtually implement noiseless amplification (NLA) and hence entanglement distillation via post-selective measurements, achieving significant distillation with a much improved probability of success.