Xiao-Min Hu

Efficient superdense coding in the presence of non-Markovian noise

Many quantum information tasks rely on entanglement, which is used as a resource, for example, to enable efficient and secure communication. Typically, noise, accompanied by loss of entanglement, reduces the efficiency of quantum protocols. We demonstrate experimentally a superdense coding scheme with noise, where the decrease of entanglement in Alices encoding state does not reduce the efficiency of the information transmission. Having almost fully dephased classical two-photon polarization state at the time of encoding, we reach values of mutual information close to 1.52 (1.89) with 3-state (4-state) encoding. This high efficiency relies both on non-Markovian features, that Bob exploits just before his Bell-state measurement, and on very high visibility (99.6

Time-invariant entanglement and sudden death of nonlocality

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Experimental creation of superposition of unknown photonic quantum states

) of the Hong-Ou-Mandel interference within the experimental set-up. Our proof-of-principle results pave the way for exploiting non-Markovianity to improve the efficiency and security of quantum information processing tasks.

Are observables necessarily Hermitian

We investigate both theoretically and experimentally the dynamics of entanglement and non-locality for two qubits immersed in a global pure dephasing environment. We demonstrate the existence of a class of states for which entanglement is forever frozen during the dynamics, even if the state of the system does evolve. At the same time non-local correlations, quantified by the violation of the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) inequality, either undergo sudden death or are trapped during the dynamics.

Beating the channel capacity limit for superdense coding with entangled ququarts

As one of the most intriguing intrinsic properties of quantum world, quantum superposition provokes great interests in its own generation. Oszmaniec [Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 110403 (2016)] have proven that though a universal quantum machine that creates superposition of arbitrary two unknown states is physically impossible, a probabilistic protocol exists in the case of two input states have nonzero overlaps with the referential state. Here we report a heralded quantum machine realizing superposition of arbitrary two unknown photonic qubits as long as they have nonzero overlaps with the horizontal polarization state

Experimental realization of path-polarization hybrid high-dimensional pure state

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Experimental Test of Compatibility-Loophole-Free Contextuality with Spatially Separated Entangled Qutrits

. A total of 11 different qubit pairs are chosen to test this protocol by comparing the reconstructed output state with theoretical expected superposition of input states. We obtain the average fidelity as high as 0.99, which shows the excellent reliability of our realization. This realization not only deepens our understanding of quantum superposition but also has significant applications in quantum information and quantum computation, e.g., generating non-classical states in the context of quantum optics and realizing information compression by coherent superposition of results of independent runs of subroutines in a quantum computation.

Nonlocality from Local Contextuality.

Observables are believed that they must be Hermitian in quantum theory. Based on the obviously physical fact that only eigenstates of observable and its corresponding probabilities, i.e., spectrum distribution of observable are actually observed, we argue that observables need not necessarily be Hermitian. More generally, observables should be reformulated as normal operators including Hermitian operators as a subclass. This reformulation is consistent with the quantum theory currently used and does not change any physical results. The Clauser–Horne–Shimony–Holt (CHSH) inequality is taken as an example to show that our opinion does not conflict with conventional quantum theory and gives the same physical results. Reformulation of observables as normal operators not only coincides with the physical facts, but also will deepen our understanding of measurement in quantum theory.

Experimental Sharing of Nonlocality among Multiple Observers with One Entangled Pair via Optimal Weak Measurements

Experimental demonstration of beating the channel capacity limit for superdense coding with high-dimensional entanglement. Quantum superdense coding protocols enhance channel capacity by using shared quantum entanglement between two users. The channel capacity can be as high as 2 when one uses entangled qubits. However, this limit can be surpassed by using high-dimensional entanglement. We report an experiment that exceeds the limit using high-quality entangled ququarts with fidelities up to 0.98, demonstrating a channel capacity of 2.09 ± 0.01. The measured channel capacity is also higher than that obtained when transmitting only one ququart. We use the setup to transmit a five-color image with a fidelity of 0.952. Our experiment shows the great advantage of high-dimensional entanglement and will stimulate research on high-dimensional quantum information processes.

Experimental demonstration of efficient superdense coding in the presence of non-Markovian noise

High-dimensional entanglement offers promising perspectives in quantum information science. However, how to generate high-quality high-dimensional entanglement and control it efficiently is still a challenge. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a polarization-path hybrid high-dimensional entangled two-photon source with extremely high quality. Based on stable interferometers, we measured fidelities exceeding 0.99 for both three-dimensional and four-dimensional maximal entanglement. The experimental setup can also be used to prepare arbitrary high-dimensional pure state and can be efficiently extended to even higher dimensional systems. Our new source will shed new light on high-dimensional quantum information processes.