Kaushik P. Seshadreesan

Rényi generalizations of the conditional quantum mutual information

The conditional quantum mutual information I(A; B|C) of a tripartite state ρABC is an information quantity which lies at the center of many problems in quantum information theory. Three of its main properties are that it is non-negative for any tripartite state, that it decreases under local operations applied to systems A and B, and that it obeys the duality relation I(A; B|C) = I(A; B|D) for a four-party pure state on systems ABCD. The conditional mutual information also underlies the squashed entanglement, an entanglement measure that satisfies all of the axioms desired for an entanglement measure. As such, it has been an open question to find Renyi generalizations of the conditional mutual information, that would allow for a deeper understanding of the original quantity and find applications beyond the traditional memoryless setting of quantum information theory. The present paper addresses this question, by defining different α-Renyi generalizations I α (A; B|C) of the conditional mutual information, some of which we can prove converge to the conditional mutual information in the limit α → 1. Furthermore, we prove that many of these generalizations satisfy non-negativity, duality, and monotonicity with respect to local operations on one of the systems A or B (with it being left as an open question to prove that monotonicity holds with respect to local operations on both systems). The quantities defined here should find applications in quantum information theory and perhaps even in other areas of physics, but we leave this for future work. We also state a conjecture regarding the monotonicity of the Renyi conditional mutual informations defined here with respect to the Renyi parameter α. We prove that this conjecture is true in some special cases and when α is in a neighborhood of one.

Renyi squashed entanglement, discord, and relative entropy differences

The squashed entanglement quantifies the amount of entanglement in a bipartite quantum state, and it satisfies all of the axioms desired for an entanglement measure. The quantum discord is a measure of quantum correlations that are different from those due to entanglement. What these two measures have in common is that they are both based upon the conditional quantum mutual information. In Berta et al (2015 J. Math. Phys. 56 022205), we recently proposed Renyi generalizations of the conditional quantum mutual information of a tripartite state on ABC (with C being the conditioning system), which were shown to satisfy some properties that hold for the original quantity, such as non-negativity, duality, and monotonicity with respect to local operations on the system B (with it being left open to show that the Renyi quantity is monotone with respect to local operations on system A). Here we define a Renyi squashed entanglement and a Renyi quantum discord based on a Renyi conditional quantum mutual information and investigate these quantities in detail. Taking as a conjecture that the Renyi conditional quantum mutual information is monotone with respect to local operations on both systems A and B, we prove that the Renyi squashed entanglement and the Renyi quantum discord satisfy many of the properties of the respective original von Neumann entropy based quantities. In our prior work (Berta et al 2015 Phys. Rev. A 91 022333), we also detailed a procedure to obtain Renyi generalizations of any quantum information measure that is equal to a linear combination of von Neumann entropies with coefficients chosen from the set {-1, 0, 1}. Here, we extend this procedure to include differences of relative entropies. Using the extended procedure and a conjectured monotonicity of the Renyi generalizations in the Renyi parameter, we discuss potential remainder terms for well known inequalities such as monotonicity of the relative entropy, joint convexity of the relative entropy, and the Holevo bound.

Phase estimation at the quantum Cramér-Rao bound via parity detection

Interferometry is a vital component of various precision measurement, sensing, and imaging techniques. It works based on mapping the quantity of interest on to the unknown phase of a system and estimating the latter; for example, the relative phase between the two modes or “arms” of an optical interferometer. Optical interferometry, often described in the Mach-Zehnder configuration, in general differs in the strategies of state preparation and detection. The conventional choice is to use a coherent light source and intensity difference detection. Assuming the unitary phase acquisition operator to be:

Parity detection achieves the Heisenberg limit in interferometry with coherent mixed with squeezed vacuum light

The interference between coherent and squeezed vacuum light can produce path entangled states with very high fidelities. We show that the phase sensitivity of the above interferometric scheme with parity detection saturates the quantum Cramer-Rao bound, which reaches the Heisenberg-limit when the coherent and squeezed vacuum light are mixed in roughly equal proportions. For the same interferometric scheme, we draw a detailed comparison between parity detection and a symmetric-logarithmic-derivative-based detection scheme suggested by Ono and Hofmann.The interference between coherent and squeezed vacuum light effectively produces path entangled N00N states with very high fidelities. We show that the phase sensitivity of the above interferometric scheme with parity detection saturates the quantum Cramer–Rao bound, which reaches the Heisenberg limit when the coherent and squeezed vacuum light are mixed in roughly equal proportions. For the same interferometric scheme, we draw a detailed comparison between parity detection and a symmetric-logarithmic-derivative-based detection scheme suggested by Ono and Hofmann.

Quantum Optical Technologies for Metrology, Sensing, and Imaging

Over the past 20 years, bright sources of entangled photons have led to a renaissance in quantum optical interferometry. Optical interferometry has been used to test the foundations of quantum mechanics and implement some of the novel ideas associated with quantum entanglement such as quantum teleportation, quantum cryptography, quantum lithography, quantum computing logic gates, and quantum metrology. In this paper, we focus on the new ways that have been developed to exploit quantum optical entanglement in quantum metrology to beat the shot-noise limit, which can be used, e.g., in fiber optical gyroscopes and in sensors for biological or chemical targets. We also discuss how this entanglement can be used to beat the Rayleigh diffraction limit in imaging systems such as in LIDAR and optical lithography.

Boson sampling with displaced single-photon Fock states versus single-photon-added coherent states : the quantum-classical divide and computational-complexity transitions in linear optics

Boson sampling is a specific quantum computation, which is likely hard to implement efficiently on a classical computer. The task is to sample the output photon number distribution of a linear optical interferometric network, which is fed with single-photon Fock state inputs. A question that has been asked is if the sampling problems associated with any other input quantum states of light (other than the Fock states) to a linear optical network and suitable output detection strategies are also of similar computational complexity as boson sampling. We consider the states that differ from the Fock states by a displacement operation, namely the displaced Fock states and the photon-added coherent states. It is easy to show that the sampling problem associated with displaced single-photon Fock states and a displaced photon number detection scheme is in the same complexity class as boson sampling for all values of displacement. On the other hand, we show that the sampling problem associated with single-photon-added coherent states and the same displaced photon number detection scheme demonstrates a computational complexity transition. It transitions from being just as hard as boson sampling when the input coherent amplitudes are sufficiently small, to a classically simulatable problem in the limit of large coherent amplitudes.

Sampling arbitrary photon-added or photon-subtracted squeezed states is in the same complexity class as boson sampling

Boson sampling is a simple model for non-universal linear optics quantum computing using far fewer physical resources than universal schemes. An input state comprising vacuum and single photon states is fed through a Haar-random linear optics network and sampled at the output using coincidence photodetection. This problem is strongly believed to be classically hard to simulate. We show that an analogous procedure implements the same problem, using photon-added or -subtracted squeezed vacuum states (with arbitrary squeezing), where sampling at the output is performed via parity measurements. The equivalence is exact and independent of the squeezing parameter, and hence provides an entire class of new quantum states of light in the same complexity class as boson sampling.

Bounds on Entanglement Distillation and Secret Key Agreement for Quantum Broadcast Channels

The squashed entanglement of a quantum channel is an additive function of quantum channels, which finds application as an upper bound on the rate at which secret key and entanglement can be generated when using a quantum channel a large number of times in addition to unlimited classical communication. This quantity has led to an upper bound of log((1+η)/(1-η)) on the capacity of a pure-loss bosonic channel for such a task, where η is the average fraction of photons that make it from the input to the output of the channel. The purpose of this paper is to extend these results beyond the single-sender single-receiver setting to the more general case of a single sender and multiple receivers (a quantum broadcast channel). We employ multipartite generalizations of the squashed entanglement to constrain the rates at which secret key and entanglement can be generated between any subset of the users of such a channel, along the way developing several new properties of these measures. We apply our results to the case of a pure-loss broadcast channel with one sender and two receivers.

Rényi generalizations of quantum information measures

Quantum information measures such as the entropy and the mutual information find applications in physics, e.g., as correlation measures. Generalizing such measures based on the Renyi entropies is expected to enhance their scope in applications. We prescribe Renyi generalizations for any quantum information measure which consists of a linear combination of von Neumann entropies with coefficients chosen from the set {−1,0,1} . As examples, we describe Renyi generalizations of the conditional quantum mutual information, some quantum multipartite information measures, and the topological entanglement entropy. Among these, we discuss the various properties of the Renyi conditional quantum mutual information and sketch some potential applications. We conjecture that the proposed Renyi conditional quantum mutual informations are monotone increasing in the Renyi parameter, and we have proof of this conjecture for some special cases.

Operational meaning of quantum measures of recovery

Several information measures have recently been defined that capture the notion of recoverability. In particular, the fidelity of recovery quantifies how well one can recover a system