No nexiste nce of n-qubit u nexte ndible product bases of size $$2^ n-5$$2 n-5

It is known that the n-qubit system has no unextendible product bases (UPBs) of cardinality \(2^n-1\), \(2^n-2\) and \(2^n-3\). On the other hand, the n-qubit UPBs of cardinality \(2^n-4\) exist for all \(n\ge 3\). We prove that they do not exist for cardinality \(2^n-5\).     

A highly efficient scheme for joint remote preparation of multi-qubit W state with minimum quantum resource

We present a highly efficient scheme for perfect joint remote preparation of an arbitrary \( 2^{n} \)-qubit W state with minimum quantum resource. Both the senders Alice and Bob intend to jointly prepare one \( 2^{n} \)-qubit W state for the remote receiver Charlie. In the beginning, they help the remote receiver Charlie to construct one n-qubit intermediate state which is closely related to the target \( 2^{n} \)-qubit W state. Afterward, Charlie introduces auxiliary qubits and applies appropriate operations to obtain the target \( 2^{n} \)-qubit W state. Compared with previous schemes, our scheme requires minimum quantum resource and least amount of classical communication. Moreover, our scheme has a significant potential for being adapted to remote state preparation of other special states.     

Entanglement witness criteria of strong-<Emphasis Type="Italic">k</Emphasis>-separability for multipartite quantum states

Let \(H_{1}, H_{2},\ldots ,H_{n}\) be separable complex Hilbert spaces with \(\dim H_{i}\ge 2\) and \(n\ge 2\). Assume that \(\rho \) is a state in \(H=H_1\otimes H_2\otimes \cdots \otimes H_n\). \(\rho \) is called strong-k-separable \((2\le k\le n)\) if \(\rho \) is separable for any k-partite division of H. In this paper, an entanglement witnesses criterion of strong-k-separability is obtained, which says that \(\rho \) is not strong-k-separable if and only if there exist a k-division space \(H_{m_{1}}\otimes \cdots \otimes H_{m_{k}}\) of H, a finite-rank linear elementary operator positive on product states \(\Lambda :\mathcal {B}(H_{m_{2}}\otimes \cdots \otimes H_{m_{k}})\rightarrow \mathcal {B}(H_{m_{1}})\) and a state \(\rho _{0}\in \mathcal {S}(H_{m_{1}}\otimes H_{m_{1}})\), such that \(\mathrm {Tr}(W\rho )<0\), where \(W=(\mathrm{Id}\otimes \Lambda ^{\dagger })\rho _{0}\) is an entanglement witness. In addition, several different methods of constructing entanglement witnesses for multipartite states are also given.     

Biseparability of noisy pseudopure,W and GHZ states using conditional quantum relative Tsallis entropy

We employ the conditional version of sandwiched Tsallis relative entropy to determine \(1:N-1\) separability range in the noisy one-parameter families of pseudopure and Werner-like N-qubit W, GHZ states. The range of the noisy parameter, for which the conditional sandwiched Tsallis relative entropy is positive, reveals perfect agreement with the necessary and sufficient criteria for separability in the \(1:N-1\) partition of these one parameter noisy states.     

Remote preparation of an arbitrary multi-qubit state via two-qubit entangled states

We propose a novel scheme for remote preparation of an arbitrary n-qubit state with the aid of an appropriate local \(2^n\times 2^n\) unitary operation and n maximally entangled two-qubit states. The analytical expression of local unitary operation, which is constructed in the form of iterative process, is presented for the preparation of n-qubit state in detail. We obtain the total successful probabilities of the scheme in the general and special cases, respectively. The feasibility of our scheme in preparing remotely multi-qubit states is explicitly demonstrated by theoretical studies and concrete examples, and our results show that the novel proposal could enlarge the applied range of remote state preparation.     

Monogamy and polygamy for multi-qubit W-class states using convex-roof extended negativity of assistance and Rényi-$$\alpha $$ entropy

We present some new analytical polygamy inequalities satisfied by the x-th power of convex-roof extended negativity of assistance with \(x\ge 2\) and \(x\le 0\) for multi-qubit generalized W-class states. Using Rényi-\(\alpha \) entropy (R\(\alpha \)E) with \(\alpha \in [(\sqrt{7}-1)/2, (\sqrt{13}-1)/2]\), we prove new monogamy and polygamy relations. We further show that the monogamy inequality also holds for the \(\mu \)th power of Rényi-\(\alpha \) entanglement. Moreover, we study two examples in multipartite higher-dimensional system for those new inequalities.     

How the Hawking radiation affect quantum Fisher information of Dirac particles in the background of a Schwarzschild black hole

In this work, the effect of Hawking radiation on the quantum Fisher information (QFI) of Dirac particles is investigated in the background of a Schwarzschild black hole. Interestingly, it has been verified that the QFI with respect to the weight parameter \(\theta \) of a target state is always independent of the Hawking temperature T. This implies that if we encode the information on the weight parameter, then we can affirm that the corresponding accuracy of the parameter estimation will be immune to the Hawking effect. Besides, it reveals that the QFI with respect to the phase parameter \(\phi \) exhibits a decay behavior with the increase in the Hawking temperature T and converges to a nonzero value in the limit of infinite Hawking temperature T. Remarkably, it turns out that the function \(F_\phi \) on \(\theta =\pi \big /4\) symmetry was broken by the influence of the Hawking radiation. Finally, we generalize the case of a three-qubit system to a case of a N-qubit system, i.e., \(|\psi \rangle _{1,2,3,\ldots ,N} =(\cos \theta | 0 \rangle ^{\otimes N}+\sin \theta \mathrm{e}^{i\phi }| 1 \rangle ^{\otimes N})\) and obtain an interesting result: the number of particles in the initial state does not affect the QFI \(F_\theta \), nor the QFI \(F_\phi \). However, with the increasing number of particles located near the event horizon, \(F_\phi \) will be affected by Hawking radiation to a large extent, while \(F_\theta \) is still free from disturbance resulting from the Hawking effects.     

Creating maximally entangled states by gluing

We introduce a general method of gluing multi-partite states and show that entanglement swapping is a special class of a wider range of gluing operations. The gluing operation of two m and n qudit states consists of an entangling operation on two given qudits of the two states followed by operations of measurements of the two qudits in the computational basis. Depending on how many qudits (two, one or zero) we measure, we have three classes of gluing operation, resulting respectively in \(m+n-2\), \(m+n-1\), or \(m+n\) qudit states. Entanglement swapping belongs to the first class and has been widely studied, while the other two classes are presented and studied here. In particular, we study how larger GHZ and W states can be constructed when we glue the smaller GHZ and W states by the second method. Finally we prove that when we glue two states by the third method, the k-uniformity of the states is preserved. That is when a k-uniform state of m qudits is glued to a \(k'\)-uniform state of n qudits, the resulting state will be a \(\hbox {min}(k,k')\)-uniform of \(m+n\) qudits.     

Pure state ‘really’ informationally complete with rank-1 POVM

What is the minimal number of elements in a rank-1 positive operator-valued measure (POVM) which can uniquely determine any pure state in d-dimensional Hilbert space \(\mathcal {H}_d\)? The known result is that the number is no less than \(3d-2\). We show that this lower bound is not tight except for \(d=2\) or 4. Then we give an upper bound \(4d-3\). For \(d=2\), many rank-1 POVMs with four elements can determine any pure states in \(\mathcal {H}_2\). For \(d=3\), we show eight is the minimal number by construction. For \(d=4\), the minimal number is in the set of \(\{10,11,12,13\}\). We show that if this number is greater than 10, an unsettled open problem can be solved that three orthonormal bases cannot distinguish all pure states in \(\mathcal {H}_4\). For any dimension d, we construct \(d+2k-2\) adaptive rank-1 positive operators for the reconstruction of any unknown pure state in \(\mathcal {H}_d\), where \(1\le k \le d\).     

The panpositionable panconnectedness of crossed cubes

In many parallel and distributed multiprocessor systems, the processors are connected based on different types of interconnection networks. The topological structure of an interconnection network is typically modeled as a graph. Among the many kinds of network topologies, the crossed cube is one of the most popular. In this paper, we investigate the panpositionable panconnectedness problem with respect to the crossed cube. A graph G is r-panpositionably panconnected if for any three distinct vertices x, y, z of G and for any integer \(l_1\) satisfying \(r \le l_1 \le |V(G)| - r - 1\), there exists a path \(P = [x, P_1, y, P_2, z]\) in G such that (i) \(P_1\) joins x and y with \(l(P_1) = l_1\) and (ii) \(P_2\) joins y and z with \(l(P_2) = l_2\) for any integer \(l_2\) satisfying \(r \le l_2 \le |V(G)| - l_1 - 1\), where |V(G)| is the total number of vertices in G and \(l(P_1)\) (respectively, \(l(P_2)\)) is the length of path \(P_1\) (respectively, \(P_2\)). By mathematical induction, we demonstrate that the n-dimensional crossed cube \(CQ_n\) is n-panpositionably panconnected. This result indicates that the path embedding of joining x and z with a mediate vertex y in \(CQ_n\) is extremely flexible. Moreover, applying our result, crossed cube problems such as panpositionable pancyclicity, panpositionably Hamiltonian connectedness, and panpositionable Hamiltonicity can be solved.     

Construction of quantum caps in projective space <Emphasis Type="Italic">PG</Emphasis>(<Emphasis Type="Italic">r</Emphasis>, 4) and quantum codes of distance 4

Constructions of quantum caps in projective space PG(r, 4) by recursive methods and computer search are discussed. For each even n satisfying \(n\ge 282\) and each odd z satisfying \(z\ge 275\), a quantum n-cap and a quantum z-cap in \(PG(k-1, 4)\) with suitable k are constructed, and \([[n,n-2k,4]]\) and \([[z,z-2k,4]]\) quantum codes are derived from the constructed quantum n-cap and z-cap, respectively. For \(n\ge 282\) and \(n\ne 286\), 756 and 5040, or \(z\ge 275\), the results on the sizes of quantum caps and quantum codes are new, and all the obtained quantum codes are optimal codes according to the quantum Hamming bound. While constructing quantum caps, we also obtain many large caps in PG(r, 4) for \(r\ge 11\). These results concerning large caps provide improved lower bounds on the maximal sizes of caps in PG(r, 4) for \(r\ge 11\).     

General tracking control of arbitrary <Emphasis Type="Italic">N</Emphasis>-level quantum systems using piecewise time-independent potentials

Here we propose a tracking quantum control protocol for arbitrary N-level systems. The goal is to make the expected value of an observable \({\mathcal O}\) to follow a predetermined trajectory S(t). For so, we drive the quantum state \(|\varPsi (t) \rangle \) evolution through an external potential V which depends on \(M_V\) tunable parameters (e.g., the amplitude and phase (thus \(M_V = 2\)) of a laser field in the dipolar condition). At instants \(t_n\), these parameters can be rapidly switched to specific values and then kept constant during time intervals \(\Delta t\). The method determines which sets of parameters values can result in \(\langle \varPsi (t) | {\mathcal O} |\varPsi (t) \rangle = S(t)\). It is numerically robust (no intrinsic divergences) and relatively fast since we need to solve only nonlinear algebraic (instead of a system of coupled nonlinear differential) equations to obtain the parameters at the successive \(\Delta t\)’s. For a given S(t), the required minimum \(M_V = M_{\min }\) ‘degrees of freedom’ of V attaining the control is a good figure of merit of the problem difficulty. For instance, the control cannot be unconditionally realizable if \(M_{\min } > 2\) and V is due to a laser field (the usual context in real applications). As it is discussed and exemplified, in these cases a possible procedure is to relax the control in certain problematic (but short) time intervals. Finally, when existing the approach can systematically access distinct possible solutions, thereby allowing a relatively simple way to search for the best implementation conditions. Illustrations for 3-, 4-, and 5-level systems and some comparisons with calculations in the literature are presented.     

A parameterized complexity view on non-preemptively scheduling interval-constrained jobs: few machines,small looseness,and small slack

We study the problem of non-preemptively scheduling n jobs, each job j with a release time \(t_j\), a deadline \(d_j\), and a processing time \(p_j\), on m parallel identical machines. Cieliebak et al. (2004) considered the two constraints \(|d_j-t_j|\le \lambda {}p_j\) and \(|d_j-t_j|\le p_j +\sigma \) and showed the problem to be NP-hard for any \(\lambda >1\) and for any \(\sigma \ge 2\). We complement their results by parameterized complexity studies: we show that, for any \(\lambda >1\), the problem remains weakly NP-hard even for \(m=2\) and strongly W[1]-hard parameterized by m. We present a pseudo-polynomial-time algorithm for constant m and \(\lambda \) and a fixed-parameter tractability result for the parameter m combined with \(\sigma \).     

Local distinguishability of generalized Bell states

We investigate the distinguishability of orthogonal generalized Bell states (GBSs) in \(d\otimes d\) system by local operations and classical communication (LOCC), where d is a prime. We show that |S| is no more than \(d+1\) for any l GBSs, i.e., \(|S|\le d+1\), where S is maximal set which is composed of pairwise noncommuting pairs in \({\varDelta } U\). If \(|S|\le d\), then the l GBSs can be distinguished by LOCC according to our main Theorem. Compared with the results (Fan in Phys Rev Lett 92:177905, 2004; Tian et al. in Phys Rev A 92:042320, 2015), our result is more general. It can determine local distinguishability of \(l (> k)\) GBSs, where k is the number of GBSs in Fan’s and Tian’s results. Only for \(|S|=d+1\), we do not find the answer. We conjecture that any l GBSs cannot be distinguished by one-way LOCC if \(|S|=d+1\). If this conjecture is right, the problem about distinguishability of GBSs with one-way LOCC is completely solved in \(d\otimes d\).     

New q-ary quantum MDS codes with distances bigger than $$\frac{ q}{2}$$

The construction of quantum MDS codes has been studied by many authors. We refer to the table in page 1482 of (IEEE Trans Inf Theory 61(3):1474–1484, 2015) for known constructions. However, there have been constructed only a few q-ary quantum MDS \([[n,n-2d+2,d]]_q\) codes with minimum distances \(d>\frac{q}{2}\) for sparse lengths \(n>q+1\). In the case \(n=\frac{q^2-1}{m}\) where \(m|q+1\) or \(m|q-1\) there are complete results. In the case \(n=\frac{q^2-1}{m}\) while \(m|q^2-1\) is neither a factor of \(q-1\) nor \(q+1\), no q-ary quantum MDS code with \(d> \frac{q}{2}\) has been constructed. In this paper we propose a direct approach to construct Hermitian self-orthogonal codes over \(\mathbf{F}_{q^2}\). Then we give some new q-ary quantum codes in this case. Moreover many new q-ary quantum MDS codes with lengths of the form \(\frac{w(q^2-1)}{u}\) and minimum distances \(d > \frac{q}{2}\) are presented.     

Two Mixed Finite Element Methods for Time-Fractional Diffusion Equations

Based on spatial conforming and nonconforming mixed finite element methods combined with classical L1 time stepping method, two fully-discrete approximate schemes with unconditional stability are first established for the time-fractional diffusion equation with Caputo derivative of order \(0<\alpha <1\). As to the conforming scheme, the spatial global superconvergence and temporal convergence order of \(O(h^2+\tau ^{2-\alpha })\) for both the original variable u in \(H^1\)-norm and the flux \(\vec {p}=\nabla u\) in \(L^2\)-norm are derived by virtue of properties of bilinear element and interpolation postprocessing operator, where h and \(\tau \) are the step sizes in space and time, respectively. At the same time, the optimal convergence rates in time and space for the nonconforming scheme are also investigated by some special characters of \(\textit{EQ}_1^{\textit{rot}}\) nonconforming element, which manifests that convergence orders of \(O(h+\tau ^{2-\alpha })\) and \(O(h^2+\tau ^{2-\alpha })\) for the original variable u in broken \(H^1\)-norm and \(L^2\)-norm, respectively, and approximation for the flux \(\vec {p}\) converging with order \(O(h+\tau ^{2-\alpha })\) in \(L^2\)-norm. Numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the theoretical analysis.     

Connecting unextendible maximally entangled base with partial Hadamard matrices

We study the unextendible maximally entangled bases (UMEB) in \(\mathbb {C}^{d}\bigotimes \mathbb {C}^{d}\) and connect the problem to the partial Hadamard matrices. We show that for a given special UMEB in \(\mathbb {C}^{d}\bigotimes \mathbb {C}^{d}\), there is a partial Hadamard matrix which cannot be extended to a Hadamard matrix in \(\mathbb {C}^{d}\). As a corollary, any \((d-1)\times d\) partial Hadamard matrix can be extended to a Hadamard matrix, which answers a conjecture about \(d=5\). We obtain that for any d there is a UMEB except for \(d=p\ \text {or}\ 2p\), where \(p\equiv 3\mod 4\) and p is a prime. The existence of different kinds of constructions of UMEBs in \(\mathbb {C}^{nd}\bigotimes \mathbb {C}^{nd}\) for any \(n\in \mathbb {N}\) and \(d=3\times 5 \times 7\) is also discussed.     

Cyclic quantum teleportation

We propose a scheme of cyclic quantum teleportation for three unknown qubits using six-qubit maximally entangled state as the quantum channel. Suppose there are three observers Alice, Bob and Charlie, each of them has been given a quantum system such as a photon or spin-\(\frac{1}{2}\) particle, prepared in state unknown to them. We show how to implement the cyclic quantum teleportation where Alice can transfer her single-qubit state of qubit a to Bob, Bob can transfer his single-qubit state of qubit b to Charlie and Charlie can also transfer his single-qubit state of qubit c to Alice. We can also implement the cyclic quantum teleportation with \(N\geqslant 3\) observers by constructing a 2N-qubit maximally entangled state as the quantum channel. By changing the quantum channel, we can change the direction of teleportation. Therefore, our scheme can realize teleportation in quantum information networks with N observers in different directions, and the security of our scheme is also investigated at the end of the paper.     

Entangled photon-added coherent states

We study the degree of entanglement of arbitrary superpositions of m, n photon-added coherent states (PACS) \(\mathinner {|{\psi }\rangle } \propto u \mathinner {|{{\alpha },m}\rangle }\mathinner {|{{\beta },n }\rangle }+ v \mathinner {|{{\beta },n}\rangle }\mathinner {|{{\alpha },m}\rangle }\) using the concurrence and obtain the general conditions for maximal entanglement. We show that photon addition process can be identified as an entanglement enhancer operation for superpositions of coherent states (SCS). Specifically for the known bipartite positive SCS: \(\mathinner {|{\psi }\rangle } \propto \mathinner {|{\alpha }\rangle }_a\mathinner {|{-\alpha }\rangle }_b + \mathinner {|{-\alpha }\rangle }_a\mathinner {|{\alpha }\rangle }_b \) whose entanglement tends to zero for \(\alpha \rightarrow 0\), can be maximal if al least one photon is added in a subsystem. A full family of maximally entangled PACS is also presented. We also analyzed the decoherence effects in the entangled PACS induced by a simple depolarizing channel . We find that robustness against depolarization is increased by adding photons to the coherent states of the superposition. We obtain the dependence of the critical depolarization \(p_{\text {crit}}\) for null entanglement as a function of \(m,n, \alpha \) and \(\beta \).     

High-fidelity quantum state preparation using neighboring optimal control

We present an approach to single-shot high-fidelity preparation of an n-qubit state based on neighboring optimal control theory. This represents a new application of the neighboring optimal control formalism which was originally developed to produce single-shot high-fidelity quantum gates. To illustrate the approach, and to provide a proof-of-principle, we use it to prepare the two-qubit Bell state \(|\beta _{01}\rangle = (1/\sqrt{2})\left[ \, |01\rangle + |10\rangle \,\right] \) with an error probability \(\varepsilon \sim 10^{-6}\) (\(10^{-5}\)) for ideal (non-ideal) control. Using standard methods in the literature, these high-fidelity Bell states can be leveraged to fault-tolerantly prepare the logical state \(|\overline{\beta }_{01}\rangle \).