Entanglement sudden death: a threat to advanced quantum key distribution?

Entanglement is a global characteristic unique to quantum states that depends on quantum coherence and may allow one to carry out communications and information processing tasks that are either impossible or less efficient using classical states. Because environmental noise, even when entirely local in spatial extent, can fully destroy entanglement in finite time, an effect referred to as “entanglement sudden death” (ESD), it may threaten quantum information processing tasks. Although it may be possible to “distill” entanglement from a collection of noise-affected systems under appropriate circumstances, once entanglement has been completely lost no amount of distillation can recover it. It is therefore extremely important to avoid its complete destruction in times comparable to those of information processing tasks. Here, the effect of local noise on a class of entangled states used in entanglement-based quantum key distribution is considered and the threat ESD might pose to it is assessed.     

Protecting single-photon entanglement with practical entanglement source

Single-photon entanglement (SPE) is important for quantum communication and quantum information processing. However, SPE is sensitive to photon loss. In this paper, we discuss a linear optical amplification protocol for protecting SPE. Different from the previous protocols, we exploit the practical spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) source to realize the amplification, for the ideal entanglement source is unavailable in current quantum technology. Moreover, we prove that the amplification using the entanglement generated from SPDC source as auxiliary is better than the amplification assisted with single photons. The reason is that the vacuum state from SPDC source will not affect the amplification, so that it can be eliminated automatically. This protocol may be useful in future long-distance quantum communications.     

Dynamics of measurement-induced nonlocality under decoherence

Measurement-induced nonlocality (MIN)—captures nonlocal effects of a quantum state due to local von Neumann projective measurements, is a bona-fide measure of quantum correlation between constituents of a composite system. In this paper, we study the dynamical behavior of entanglement (measured by concurrence), Hilbert–Schmidt MIN and fidelity-based MIN (F-MIN) under local noisy channels such as hybrid (consists of bit flip, phase flip and bit-phase flip), generalized amplitude damping (GAD) and depolarizing channels for the initial Bell diagonal state. We observed that while sudden death of entanglement occurs in hybrid and GAD channels, MIN and F-MIN are more robust against such noises. Finally, we demonstrate the revival of MIN and F-MIN after a dark point of time against depolarizing noise.     

Dynamics of tripartite quantum correlations and decoherence in flux qubit systems under local and non-local static noise

We investigate the dynamics of entanglement, decoherence and quantum discord in a system of three non-interacting superconducting flux qubits (fqubits) initially prepared in a Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger (GHZ) state and subject to static noise in different, bipartite and common environments, since it is recognized that different noise configurations generally lead to completely different dynamical behavior of physical systems. The noise is modeled by randomizing the single fqubit transition amplitude. Decoherence and quantum correlations dynamics are strongly affected by the purity of the initial state, type of system–environment interaction and the system–environment coupling strength. Specifically, quantum correlations can persist when the fqubits are commonly coupled to a noise source, and reaches a saturation value respective to the purity of the initial state. As the number of decoherence channels increases (bipartite and different environments), decoherence becomes stronger against quantum correlations that decay faster, exhibiting sudden death and revival phenomena. The residual entanglement can be successfully detected by means of suitable entanglement witness, and we derive a necessary condition for entanglement detection related to the tunable and non-degenerated energy levels of fqubits. In accordance with the current literature, our results further suggest the efficiency of fqubits over ordinary ones, as far as the preservation of quantum correlations needed for quantum processing purposes is concerned.     

Public and private resource trade-offs for a quantum channel

Collins and Popescu realized a powerful analogy between several resources in classical and quantum information theory. The Collins?CPopescu analogy states that public classical communication, private classical communication, and secret key interact with one another somewhat similarly to the way that classical communication, quantum communication, and entanglement interact. This paper discusses the information-theoretic treatment of this analogy for the case of noisy quantum channels. We determine a capacity region for a quantum channel interacting with the noiseless resources of public classical communication, private classical communication, and secret key. We then compare this region with the classical-quantum-entanglement region from our prior efforts and explicitly observe the information-theoretic consequences of the strong correlations in entanglement and the lack of a super-dense coding protocol in the public-private-secret-key setting. The region simplifies for several realistic, physically-motivated channels such as entanglement-breaking channels, Hadamard channels, and quantum erasure channels, and we are able to compute and plot the region for several examples of these channels.     

Dynamics of quantum entanglement in quantum channels

Based on the von Neumann entropy, we give a computational formalism of the quantum entanglement dynamics in quantum channels, which can be applied to a general finite systems coupled with their environments in quantum channels. The quantum entanglement is invariant in the decoupled local unitary quantum channel, but it is variant in the non-local coupled unitary quantum channel. The numerical investigation for two examples, two-qubit and two-qutrit models, indicates that the quantum entanglement evolution in the quantum non-local coupling channel oscillates with the coupling strength and time, and depends on the quantum entanglement of the initial state. It implies that quantum information loses or gains when the state of systems evolves in the quantum non-local coupling channel.     

Geometric measure of quantum discord for a two-parameter class of states in a qubit–qutrit system under various dissipative channels

Quantum discord, as a measure of all quantum correlations, has been proposed as the key resource in certain quantum communication tasks and quantum computational models without containing much entanglement. Daki? et al. (Phys Rev Lett 105:190502, 2010) introduced a geometric measure of quantum discord (GMQD) and derived an explicit formula for any two-qubit state. Luo and Fu (Phys Rev A 82:034302, 2010) introduced another form of GMQD and derived an explicit formula for arbitrary state in a bipartite quantum system. However, the explicit analytical expression for any bipartite system was not given. In this work, we give out the explicit analytical expressions of the GMQD for a two-parameter class of states in a qubit–qutrit system and study its dynamics for the states under various dissipative channels in the first time. Our results show that all these dynamic evolutions do not lead to a sudden vanishing of GMQD. Quantum correlations vanish at an asymptotic time for local or multi-local dephasing, phase-flip, and depolarizing noise channels. However, it does not disappear even though t → ∞ for local trit-flip and local trit-phase-flip channels. Our results maybe provide some important information for the application of GMQD in hybrid qubit–qutrit systems in quantum information.     

Entanglement manipulation via dynamics in multiple quantum spin systems

We study manipulation of entanglement between two identical networks of quantum mechanical particles. Firstly, we reduce the problem of entanglement transfer to the problem of quantum state transfer. Then, we consider entanglement concentration and purification based on free dynamics on the networks and local measurements on the vertices. By introducing an appropriate measure of efficiency, we characterize the performance of the protocol. We give evidence that such a measure does not depend on the network topology, and we estimate the contribution given by the number of entangled pairs initially shared by the two networks.     

Correlation dynamics of a two-qubit system in a Bell-diagonal state under non-identical local noises

The property of quantum correlation has been studied in recent years, especially for the quantum and classical correlations affected by environment. The dynamics of quantum and classical correlations in two-qubit system under identical local noise channels have been investigated recently. Here, we will consider the dynamics of quantum and classical correlations when the local noise channels of two sides are not identical. We investigate the dynamics of quantum and classical correlations with three types of local noise channels in both Markovian and non-Markovian conditions and show the decay rules of quantum and classical correlations with different types and parameter times of local noise channels.     

Efficient entanglement channel construction schemes for a theoretical quantum network model with d-level system

Quantum entanglement plays an essential role in the field of quantum information and quantum computation. In quantum network, a general assumption for many quantum tasks is that the quantum entanglement has been prior shared among participants. Actually, the distribution of entanglement becomes complex in the network environment. We present a theoretical quantum network model with good scalability. Then, three efficient and perfect schemes for the entanglement channel construction are proposed. Some general results for d-level system are also given. Any two communication sites can construct an entanglement channel via Bell states with the assistance of the intermediate sites on their quantum chain. By using the established entanglement channel, n sites can efficiently and perfectly construct an entanglement channel via an n-qudit cat state. More importantly, an entanglement channel via an arbitrary n-qudit state can also be constructed among any n sites, or even among any t sites where 1??? t??? n. The constructed multiparticle entanglement channels have many useful applications in quantum network environment.     

Different dynamics of classical and quantum correlations under decoherence

The dynamics of classical and quantum correlations under nondissipative and dissipative decoherences are analytically and numerically investigated with both one-side measures and two-side measures. Specifically, two qubits under local amplitude damping decoherence and depolarizing decoherence channels are considered. We show that, under the action of amplitude damping decoherence, both the entanglement and correlations of the different types of initial states with same initial values, suffer different types of dynamics. Moreover, the transfers of the entanglement and correlations between the system and the environment for different types of initial states are also shown to be different. While for the action of depolarizing decoherence, there does not exist sudden change in the decay rates of both the classical and quantum correlations, which is different from some other nondissipative channels. Furthermore, the quantum dissonance can be found to keep unchanged under the action of depolarizing decoherence. Such different dynamic behaviors of different noisy quantum decoherence channels reveal distinct transmission performance of classical and quantum information.     

Remotely Prepared Entanglement: a Quantum Web Page

Abstract. In quantum teleportation, an unknown quantum state is transmitted from one party to another using only local operations and classical communication, at the cost of shared entanglement. Is it possible similarly, using an N party entangled state, to have the state retrievable by any of the N-1 possible receivers? If the receivers cooperate, and share a suitable state, this can be done reliably. The N party GHZ is one such state; I derive a large class of such states, and show that they are in general not equivalent to the GHZ. I also briefly discuss the problem where the parties do not cooperate, and the relationship to multipartite entanglement quantification. I define a new set of entanglement monotones, the entanglements of preparation.     

Generation and protection of steady-state quantum correlations due to quantum channels with memory

We have proposed a scheme of the generation and preservation of two-qubit steady-state quantum correlations through quantum channels where successive uses of the channels are correlated. Different types of noisy channels with memory, such as amplitude damping, phase damping, and depolarizing channels, have been taken into account. Some analytical or numerical results are presented. The effect of channels with memory on dynamics of quantum correlations has been discussed in detail. The results show that steady-state entanglement between two initial qubits whose initial states are prepared in a specific family states without entanglement subject to amplitude damping channel with memory can be generated. The entanglement creation is related to the memory coefficient of channel \(\mu \). The stronger the memory coefficient of channel \( \mu \) is, the more the entanglement creation is, and the earlier the separable state becomes the entangled state. Besides, we compare the dynamics of entanglement with that of quantum discord when a two-qubit system is initially prepared in an entangled state. We show that entanglement dynamics suddenly disappears, while quantum discord dynamics displays only in the asymptotic limit. Furthermore, two-qubit quantum correlations can be preserved at a long time in the limit of \(\mu \rightarrow 1\).     

Local cloning of multipartite entangled states

No cloning theorem is a very fundamental issue in quantum mechanics. But the issue is much more involved if we consider quantum state shared among two or more than two parties and allow only local operation and classical communication. In the context of the fact that no known bipartite entangled state can be cloned by local operation and classical communication (LOCC) without assistance of extra entangled state, the cloning of unknown orthogonal entangled state becomes meaningful when there is some supply of free entanglement. With restriction on supply of free entanglement, various cases have been studied. In this paper, we try to give an overview of the subject and results that have been obtained across the literature along with a new result on probabilistic LOCC cloning of four Bell states.     

Analyse informeller Kommunikationsnetzwerke am Beispiel einer Fallstudie

The structure and dynamics of informal communication networks are of central significance for the functionality of enterprise workflows and for performance and innovation of knowledge-centric organizations. While most executives are aware of this fact, there is a general lack of (semi-) automated, IT-supported methods and instruments to make informal communication networks measurable. Although logging of electronic communications has made considerable progress over the past few years, it is still extremely difficult to map personal interaction; manual approaches in particular are extremely error-prone. The article shows how informal communication networks can be investigated by IT-based methods. At the same time, the authors will be presenting an instrument (“Social Badges”) that collects personal communications automatically and more precisely than legacy approaches allow. The practical applicability of the approach is evaluated through a case study.     

State transfer with quantum side information

We first consider quantum communication protocols between a sender Alice and a receiver Bob, which transfer Alice’s quantum information to Bob by means of non-local resources, such as classical communication, quantum communication, and entanglement. In these protocols, we assume that Alice and Bob may have quantum side information, not transferred. In this work, these protocols are called the state transfer with quantum side information. We determine the optimal costs for non-local resources in the protocols and study what the effects of the use of quantum side information are. Our results can give new operational meanings to the quantum mutual information and the quantum conditional mutual information, which directly provide us with an operational interpretation of the chain rule for the quantum mutual information.     

Effect of quantum noise on deterministic remote state preparation of an arbitrary two-particle state via various quantum entangled channels

As one of important research branches of quantum communication, deterministic remote state preparation (DRSP) plays a significant role in quantum network. Quantum noises are prevalent in quantum communication, and it can seriously affect the safety and reliability of quantum communication system. In this paper, we study the effect of quantum noise on deterministic remote state preparation of an arbitrary two-particle state via different quantum channels including the \(\chi \) state, Brown state and GHZ state. Firstly, the output states and fidelities of three DRSP algorithms via different quantum entangled channels in four noisy environments, including amplitude-damping, phase-damping, bit-flip and depolarizing noise, are presented, respectively. And then, the effects of noises on three kinds of preparation algorithms in the same noisy environment are discussed. In final, the theoretical analysis proves that the effect of noise in the process of quantum state preparation is only related to the noise type and the size of noise factor and independent of the different entangled quantum channels. Furthermore, another important conclusion is given that the effect of noise is also independent of how to distribute intermediate particles for implementing DRSP through quantum measurement during the concrete preparation process. These conclusions will be very helpful for improving the efficiency and safety of quantum communication in a noisy environment.     

Heralded noiseless amplification for single-photon entangled state with polarization feature

Heralded noiseless amplification is a promising method to overcome the transmission photon loss in practical noisy quantum channel and can effectively lengthen the quantum communication distance. Single-photon entanglement is an important resource in current quantum communications. Here, we construct two single-photon-assisted heralded noiseless amplification protocols for the single-photon two-mode entangled state and single-photon three-mode W state, respectively, where the single-photon qubit has an arbitrary unknown polarization feature. After the amplification, the fidelity of the single-photon entangled state can be increased, while the polarization feature of the single-photon qubit can be well remained. Both the two protocols only require the linear optical elements, so that they can be realized under current experimental condition. Our protocols may be useful in current and future quantum information processing.     

A quantum color image encryption scheme based on coupled hyper-chaotic Lorenz system with three impulse injections

We investigate in detail the dynamics of decoherence, free and bound entanglements, and the conversion from one to another (quantum state transitions), in a two non-interacting qutrits system initially entangled and subject to independents or a common classical noise. Both Markovian and non-Markovian environments are considered. Furthermore, isotropic and bound entangled states for qutrits systems are considered as initial states. We show the efficiency of the formers over the latters against decoherence, and in preserving quantum entanglement. The loss of coherence increases monotonically with time up to a saturation value depending upon the initial state parameter and is stronger in a collective Markov environment. For the non-Markov regime the presence or absence of entanglement revival and entanglement sudden death phenomena is deduced depending on both the peculiar characteristics of the noise, the physical setup and the initial state of the system. We demonstrate distillability sudden death for conveniently selected parameters in bound entangled states; meanwhile, it is completely absent for isotropic states, where entanglement sudden death is avoided for dynamic noise independently of the noise regime and the physical setup. Our results indicate that distillability sudden death under the Markov/non-Markov noise considered can be avoided depending upon the physical setup.

     

Reversibility of Local Transformations of Multiparticle Entanglement

We consider the transformation of multisystem entangled states by local quantum operations and classical communication. We show that, for any reversible transformation, the relative entropy of entanglement for any two parties must remain constant. This shows, for example, that it is not possible to convert 2N three-party GHZ states into 3N singlets, even in an asymptotic sense. Thus there is true three-party non-locality (i.e. not all three party entanglement is equivalent to two-party entanglement). Our results also allow us to make quantitative. statements about concentrating multi-particle entanglement. Finally, we show that there is true n-party entanglement for any n.