Liang Lin-Mei

Passive Faraday-mirror attack in a practical two-way quantum-key-distribution system

The Faraday mirror (FM) plays a very important role in maintaining the stability of two-way plug-and-play quantum key distribution (QKD) systems. However, the practical FM is imperfect, which will not only introduce an additional quantum bit error rate (QBER) but also leave a loophole for Eve to spy the secret key. In this paper we propose a passive Faraday mirror attack in two-way QKD system based on the imperfection of FM. Our analysis shows that if the FM is imperfect, the dimension of Hilbert space spanned by the four states sent by Alice is three instead of two. Thus Eve can distinguish these states with a set of Positive Operator Valued Measure (POVM) operators belonging to three-dimension space, which will reduce the QBER induced by her attack. Furthermore, a relationship between the degree of the imperfection of FM and the transmittance of the practical QKD system is obtained. The results show that the probability that Eve loads her attack successfully depends on the degree of the imperfection of FM rapidly, but the QBER induced by Eves attack changes slightly with the degree of the FM imperfection.

Quantum Gate Operations in Decoherence-Free Subspace with Superconducting Charge Qubits inside a Cavity

We propose a feasible scheme to achieve universal quantum gate operations in decoherence-free subspace with superconducting charge qubits placed in a microwave cavity. Single-logic-qubit gates can be realized with cavity assisted interaction, which possesses the advantages of unconventional geometric gate operation. The two-logic-qubit controlled-phase gate between subsystems can be constructed with the help of a variable electrostatic transformer. The collective decoherence can be successfully avoided in our well-designed system. Moreover, GHZ state for logical qubits can also be easily produced in this system.

Quantum Random Number Generation Based on Quantum Phase Noise

We experimentally demonstrate a kind of high-quantum correlated, practical quantum random generation based on the quantum phase noise of a laser, which uniformly distributes in the range of (−π, π] by driving the laser with a stream of narrow electrical pulses. We propose a working mode to further suppress the impact of phase drift after we use the passive measures (thermal and mechanical isolation) to slow it down. Moreover, a new method which ensures random numbers to be true representations of quantum characteristics is presented to quantify the quantum randomness. This scheme has an inherent advantage for multiplex generation.

A Three-Node QKD Network Based on a Two-Way QKD System

We demonstrate a three-node active quantum key distribution (QKD) network with our previous two-way QKD system. An optical switch is used as a router to connect the two nodes. Adjacent nodes are connected by a 25 km optical fiber. The test over 11 h shows that our system can reduce the Raleigh backscattering efficiently in the absence of the storage fiber. Furthermore, the obtained average sifted key is about 1.2 kbps in the network, with high visibility and low quantum bit error rate in the long-time test.

Polarization Encoded Quantum Key Distribution over Special Optical Fibres

Employing a polarization compensator, an optical fibre quantum key distribution (QKD) system based on polarization coding has been developed. To obtain the compensator setting parameters, the measurement of the laser pulse polarization is performed with one single photon detector. We obtain a sifted key bit rate of about 2 kbits/s and a qubit error rate lower than 10% within 3.5 h. It is shown that polarization coding can be used for QKD over optical fibres as well. At the same time, the system is simple, easy to operate, practical and user-friendly. It gains more advantages than other systems over optical fibres when used in local area quantum communications and where the functional agility is important.

Preparation of Arbitrary Four-Qubit W State with Atomic Ensembles via Rydberg Blockade

The generation of various entangled states is an essential task in quantum information processing. Recently, a scheme (PRA 79, 022304) has been suggested for generating Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger state and cluster state with atomic ensembles based on the Rydberg blockade. Using similar resources as the earlier scheme, here we propose an experimentally feasible scheme of preparing arbitrary four-qubit W class of maximally and non-maximally entangled states with atomic ensembles in a single step. Moreover, we carefully analyze the realistic noises and predict that four-qubit W states can be produced with high fidelity (F ~ 0.994) via our scheme.

Generation of Atomic Cluster State via Adiabatic Evolution of Dark Eigenstates

We propose a scheme to generate atomic cluster states of arbitrary configuration in the cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) system. The process is achieved via adiabatic evolution of dark states, which only requires adiabatically increasing or decreasing Rabi frequencies of laser. Thus it allows the robust implementation of entanglement against certain types of errors. Our scheme is relatively decoherence-free in the sense that excited atomic states are never populated and excited cavity photon states can be made negligible in certain conditions.

Quantum Secret Sharing with Two-Particle Entangled States

We present a new protocol for the quantum secret sharing (QSS) task among multiparties with two-particle entangled states. In our scheme, the secret is split among a number of participating partners and the reconstruction requires collaboration of all the authorized partners. Instead of multiparticle Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger states, only two-particle entangled states are employed in this scheme. By local operations and individual measurements on either of the two entangled particles, each authorized partner obtains a sequence of secret bits shared with other authorized partners. This protocol can be experimentally realized using only linear optical elements and simple entanglement source. It is scalable in practice.

Three-Dimensional Quantum State Transferring Between Two Remote Atoms by Adiabatic Passage under Dissipation

Recently, Zhou et al. [Phys. Rev. A 79 (2009) 044304] proposed a scheme for transferring three-dimensional quantum states between remote atomic qubits confined in cavities connected by fibers through adiabatic passage. In order to avoid the decoherence due to spontaneous emission, Zhou et al. utilized the large detuning atom-field interaction. In the present paper, we discuss the influence of dissipation on the scheme in both the resonant atom-field interaction case and the large detuning case. We numerically analyze the success probability and the transferring fidelity. It is shown that the resonant case is a preferable choice for the technique of the stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) due to the shorter operation time and the smaller probability of dissipation.

Generation of multi-atom W states via Raman transition in an optical cavity

A simple scheme is proposed to generate the W state of N λ-type neutral atoms trapped in an optical cavity via Raman transition. Conditional on no photon leakage from the cavity, the N-qubit W state can be prepared perfectly by turning on a classical coupling field for an appropriate time. Compared with the previous ones, our scheme requires neither individual laser addressing of the atoms, nor demand for controlling N atoms to go through an optical cavity simultaneously with a constant velocity. We investigate the influence of cavity decay using the quantum jump approach and show that the preparation time decreases and the success probability increases with atom number because of a collective enhancement of the coupling.